he did not enter into a musāqāh arrangement with him, the lessee’s usufruct would necessarily be left unused. The matter would thus turn upon three alternatives: either the rent would consist of part of the usufruct; the lease would be valid only in conjunction with a musāqāh arrangement; or the lessee would be deprived of his usufruct. Moreover, if the lessor obtained all or part of the fruit, selling it—while the land and residences were under another person’s control—would in many cases diminish its value.

The matter therefore comes down to this: when separating the components of a transaction would cause harm, it is permissible to combine the two in an exchange, even if neither may permissibly be transacted separately, because the ruling that applies when they are combined differs from the ruling that applies when they are separated. For this reason, Ahmad and most jurists hold that, when physical partition is impossible, one co-owner is required to join the other in selling, or in leasing if what they jointly own is a usufruct. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said:

“Whoever emancipates a share that he owns in a slave, and possesses wealth amounting to the slave’s price, the slave shall be appraised against him at a fair value. He shall then pay his partners for their shares, and the slave shall thereby become free. Otherwise, only the portion he emancipated shall become free.”

Al-Bukhārī and Muslim both recorded it in their Sahīh collections. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) thus ordered that the entire slave be appraised and that the partner be paid his share of the value. It is well known that the value of his share when appraised separately is less than his proportionate share of the value of the whole. It follows that his entitlement is to his half-share as valued within the whole. If he is entitled to that in the case of emancipation, then he is all the more entitled to it in every other form of destruction. A person is entitled through destruction only to what he would have been entitled to through an exchange. It is therefore established that, in an exchange, he is entitled to half of the total value, and this can be achieved only by selling the whole. Thus, the property itself must be divided wherever division causes no harm; but if division would cause harm, its value must instead be divided.

If, then, we have required a co-owner to sell his share because separating it would diminish the value of his partner’s share, there is all the more reason to permit both things to be sold together if there is