for the claim would be owed to more than one party, which invites dispute and wrangling over priority, unlike the case in which only a single creditor is involved.

The point, then, is that any increase agreed upon in a racing contract is valid and binding, just as Abū Bakr once lengthened both the time and the wager at the Prophet’s ﷺ instruction.

Section
Munāḍala (archery competition) falls into two categories: competition for hitting the mark and competition for farthest distance.

• The first is unanimously permissible.
• As for competition based on distance, al-Shāfiʿī held two opinions on the matter (1), and our Ḥanbalī jurists have two approaches to it (2). Most of them prohibit it. The author of al-Rāʿiya said: “I say: If two people race their horses on the condition that the prize goes to the horse that runs the longer stretch, the contract is invalid; but if they engage in archery on the condition that the prize goes to the one whose arrow travels farther, the matter admits two possible rulings.”

We have already noted (3) that this is more deserving of validity than wrestling, swimming, or foot-racing. Accordingly, whoever permits those activities should deem its permissibility in the distance-shooting case even more obvious and more certain (4).