that these things can be assessed just as other goods whose sale Muslims unanimously permit can be assessed—and even more reliably.

Second: People have a pressing need to sell such produce. If it cannot be sold until it is dug up, its owners will suffer great harm. They may be unable either to undertake the digging themselves or to commission someone else to do it; and if they dig it all up at once, it will spoil as a result. Leaving it in the ground is therefore like leaving walnuts, almonds, and similar produce within their green hulls.

Ahmad and the other Hadith jurists permit the concessionary exchange of fresh dates on specified palms for dried dates, despite the element of exchanging an unmeasured crop for a measured quantity of the same produce, because the purchaser needs fresh dates to eat or the seller needs fruit to eat. The seller’s need here is far more pressing, and we shall establish this, Allah willing.

Likewise, the principles of Ahmad and the other Hadith jurists entail the permissibility of selling both the visible and latent produce of cucumber and melon patches once their ripeness has become apparent, even though this includes selling produce that does not yet exist. This is analogous to the unanimously accepted rule that, once some fruit on a date palm or another tree has begun to ripen, all its fruit may be sold even though some of it has not yet ripened.

The strongest justification they have offered for treating this as a departure from analogy is that the relevant fruit on a single date palm cannot be sold separately. If one unripe date were singled out in the contract, it could become indistinguishable from the others within a single day, since an unripe date can turn yellow that very day. The very same circumstance exists in a cucumber or melon patch.

Some followers of al-Shāfiī and Ahmad have sought to justify the incidental sale of something not yet in existence by arguing that any growth developing in the fruit after the contract is not subsidiary to what already existed. Rather, it belongs to the purchaser because it came into existence under his ownership.

The majority of both groups recognize that this justification is unsound, because it is incumbent