Al-Muqaddimāt al-Mumahhidāt - Ibn Rush al-Jadd - (2/396)

Al-Muqaddimāt al-MumahhidātIbn Rush al-Jadd

and would say, in justification for not reading it: “It is a problem in arithmetic, so there is no point in occupying oneself with it.” But matters are not as they claimed. Its difficulty lies in the jurisprudence, not the arithmetic. Whoever understands its legal aspects will find nothing confusing in its arithmetic, nor in that of the two problems that follow it in the chapter: where the creditor stipulates that every pair of them guarantees the entire sum, or that every group of three guarantees the entire sum. This is why I have taken care to explain and clarify it. Success rests with Allah, who has no partner, and none besides Him is worthy of worship.

Section

At the end of the problem in the book concerning three men who bought an item on condition that each guaranteed what his fellow owed, there is a passage whose difficulty requires clarification. The unproblematic portion reads:

He said: “I asked Ibn al-Qāsim about three men who bought an item from a man, who had it recorded against them that he could recover his due from whichever of them he chose, and that each guaranteed what his fellow owed. One of the three then died, and his heirs claimed that he had paid the entire sum to the seller of the item, producing one witness.”

He said: “They swear an oath in support of their witness’s testimony and are discharged from liability. They may then recover from the two surviving partners what the deceased paid on their behalf.”

As for the passage beginning, “I said: What if the heirs refuse to swear?” through to the end of his statement, it presents a difficulty. Its explanation is that, if the heirs decline to swear an oath in support of their witness’s testimony, the deceased must have been either solvent or insolvent. If he was solvent, there are three possibilities:

The first is that the two partners affirm the heirs’ claim that the deceased paid the seller the entire amount out of his own funds, on his own behalf and theirs, intending to recover their respective shares from them.

The second is that they say: “All of that came from our funds, and we had appointed him as our agent for that purpose.”

The third is that they say: “He paid that to the seller out of his own funds—and ours, since we had already given him the share of it falling to him and appointed him to pay it on our behalf.”

ويقولون - اعتذارا في ترك قراءتها -: إنها مسألة حساب فلا معنى للاشتغال بها، وليس ذلك كما كانوا يقولون، إنما انغلاقها من جهة الفقه لا من جهة الحساب، فمن فهمها من جهة الفقه لم يلتبس عليه شيء منها من طريق الحساب ولا من المسألتين الواقعتين بعدها في الباب - وهما إذا اشترط صاحب الدين أن كل اثنين منهم حميل بجميع المال أو كل ثلاثة حميل بجميع المال، فلذلك عنيت بشرحها وتفسيرها، والتوفيق بيد الله لا شريك له ولا معبود سواه. فصل وقد وقع في الكتاب في آخر مسألة الثلاثة نفر الذين اشتروا السلعة على أن كل واحد منهم حميل بما على صاحبه كلام فيه إشكال يفتقر إلى بيان ونص ما لا إشكال فيه منها: قال: وسألت ابن القاسم عن ثلاثة نفر اشتروا سلعة من رجل وكتب عليهم أيهم شئت أخذت بحقي وكل واحد منهم حميل بما على صاحبه، فمات أحد الثلاثة فادعى ورثة الهالك أنه قد دفع المال كله إلى بائع السلعة وأقاموا شاهدا، قال: يحلفون مع شاهدهم ويبرأون ويرجعون على الشريكين الباقيين بما أدى صاحبهم عنهما؛ وأما قوله: قلت فإن أبى الورثة أن يحلفوا إلى آخر قوله، ففيه إشكال، وبيانه أن الورثة إذا نكلوا عن اليمين مع شاهدهم، فإن الأمر لا يخلو من أن يكون الميت مليا أو معدما؛ فأما إن كان الميت مليا فإن الأمر لا يخلو من ثلاثة أوجه: أحدها: أن يصدق الشريكان الورثة فيما ادعوا من أن الميت دفع جميع الحق من ماله إلى البائع عن نفسه وعنهما ليرجع عنهما بما ينوبهما منه. والثاني: أن يقولا إنما جميع ذلك من أموالنا بوكالتنا إياه على ذلك. والثالث: أن يقولا إنما دفع ذلك من ماله إلى البائع - وأموالنا إذ كنا قد دفعنا إليه ما ينوبه منه وكلناه على دفعه عنا.