upon the seller to water the fruit, while the purchaser is entitled, by the contract without further stipulation, to leave it on the tree. If the contract did not entitle him to its further growth, the seller would not be required to do what is needed to bring that growth about. The seller’s duty under the sale is to provide the subject matter of the sale in full as required by the contract, not to provide what arises merely as a consequence of ownership.

Furthermore, two reports are transmitted from Ahmad regarding whether, when ripeness becomes apparent in one orchard among several, all the orchards may be sold or only those whose fruit has ripened.

The better-known report from him is that only those in which ripeness has become apparent may be sold. This was the position preferred by his early followers, such as Abū Bakr and Ibn Shāqillā.

The second report holds that the appearance of ripeness in some of them counts as ripeness for them all. This was the position preferred by most of his followers, such as Ibn Hāmid, al-Qādī, and those who followed them.

The express statement transmitted from him in connection with this report is: “If an orchard contains some fruit that has matured and some that has not, it may be sold if most of its fruit has matured.” Some of his followers therefore distinguished between a small and a large amount having ripened. This was the later position of al-Qādī, Abū Hakīm al-Nahrawānī, Abū al-Barakāt, and others who restricted the ruling to cases in which ripeness predominated. Others made no distinction between a small and a large amount having ripened, such as Abū al-Khattāb and several others. This is also the position of Mālik, al-Shāfiī, and al-Layth. Mālik went further, holding that it also counts as ripeness for adjacent cultivated plots; this too was transmitted as a report from Ahmad.

These authorities also differed as to whether the ripening of one variety—such as Barnī fresh dates—counts as ripening for all other varieties of fresh dates. There are two positions within the schools of al-Shāfiī and Ahmad.

The first does not permit this; it is the position of al-Qādī, Ibn Aqīl, and Abū Muhammad.