settlement, agency, and other such matters. Were our purpose not to state comprehensive principles encompassing multiple chapters, we would have mentioned a number of such cases.

[Chapter: The Third Principle Concerning Contracts and Their Conditions—Which Are Lawful or Unlawful, and Which Are Valid or Invalid]
[The First Position: The Default Rule Governing Contracts and Conditions Is Prohibition]

Chapter.

The third principle concerns contracts and their conditions: which of them are lawful or unlawful, and which are valid or invalid. The issues falling under this principle are exceedingly numerous.

They may be organized under two positions. The first is that the default rule governing contracts, their conditions, and similar matters is prohibition, except where the revealed law has expressly permitted them. This is the position of the Zāhirīs, and many of Abū Hanīfa’s legal principles are founded upon it, as are many of al-Shāfi‘i’s principles and those of a group among the followers of Mālik and Ahmad. Ahmad sometimes explains a contract’s invalidity on the grounds that it is supported by neither a transmitted precedent nor analogy, as he stated in one of the two reports from him concerning a person’s establishment of an endowment for himself. Likewise, a group of his followers sometimes explain the invalidity of conditions on the grounds that they conflict with what the contract entails. They say: “Any condition that conflicts with what the contract entails is invalid.”

As for the Zāhirīs, they recognize no contract or condition as valid unless its permissibility is established by a revealed text or scholarly consensus. If its permissibility is not established, they declare it invalid and presume the continuation of the ruling previously in force. They apply this principle consistently; nevertheless, in many instances it has led them to positions that other scholars reject.

As for Abū Hanīfa, his principles entail that, in contracts, he [does not recognize] conditions that conflict with what those contracts entail when unqualified. He recognizes a condition concerning the subject matter of a contract only when the contract is one that may be rescinded. Accordingly, he held invalid the stipulation of an option in a sale, and in his view delivery of the sold property may under no circumstances be deferred. This is also why he prohibited the sale of an asset