that he must be discharged from his own liability on the strength of his statement, “I have carried out your instruction to make the payment.” If his statement suffices to discharge his liability, it should all the more suffice to discharge his responsibility for entrusted property. Moreover, in the Book of the Option, ʿĪsā reports from him concerning someone who purchases one of two garments, on condition that he is committed to buying one of them, with the choice left to him: if one is lost and he claims that he had already chosen and accepted the remaining garment, his claim is accepted.

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If the recipient acknowledges receipt but claims that the property was lost, he must have received it either on terms entailing personal liability or in trust. If he received it in trust, Ibn al-Qāsim’s statements differ. On one occasion, he said that the person who handed it over is discharged by the recipient’s confirmation, and the loss falls upon the person who instructed him to make the transfer. This is his position in the book. On another occasion, he said that the person who handed it over is not discharged unless he produces evidence of delivery or the recipient produces the property. This is his position in the Book of Ibn al-Mawwāz. Both views appear in Abū Zayd’s abridgment of al-Asadiyya.

If, however, the recipient received it on terms entailing personal liability—for example, someone says, “Give the deposit I have with you to so-and-so as a loan, or as an advance payment for goods, or to a craftsman to carry out work with it,” or something similar—there are two possibilities:

The first is that the recipient is financially sound.

The second is that he is financially ruined.

If he is financially sound, there is no disagreement that the person who handed over the property is discharged by the recipient’s confirmation. If he is financially ruined, however, there is disagreement. According to one view, the person who handed it over is discharged by the recipient’s confirmation. This is the report transmitted by ʿĪsā from Ibn al-Qāsim in the Book of Consignments and Agency, in the case concerning craftsmen. According to another view, the recipient’s confirmation does not discharge him, because the recipient is financially ruined. Both views are clearly set out in the abridgment of al-Asadiyya by Abū Zayd ibn Abī al-Ghamr.

It has been said that these two views concerning this situation follow the earlier disagreement about delivery to someone who receives the property in trust, since entrustment and liability borne by a financially ruined person are alike in that