Discussion of Mines

The discussion of mines falls into three sections: first, the legal status of the mines themselves, and whether they belong to the land in which they lie; second, the rules governing agreements for working them; and third, what is due on the gold and silver extracted from them.

Section

Regarding the mines themselves, there are two opinions:

The first is that they do not belong to the land in which they lie, whether that land is owned or unowned. Authority over them rests with the ruler, who administers them and, exercising his judgment, grants them to someone to work for the recipient’s lifetime or for a period of time, without giving him ownership of the mines themselves. He collects zakat from them in all cases, in accordance with “the report that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, granted Bilāl ibn al-Hārith al-Muzanī some of the mines of al-Qabaliyya.” To this day, nothing but zakat is collected from those mines. An exception is where the mines lie in land retained by its inhabitants under a peace treaty: those inhabitants have the stronger claim to them and may, if they wish, enter into whatever lawful agreements they choose with Muslims for working them. If they embrace Islam, authority over the mines reverts to the ruler. This is Ibn al-Qāsim’s position and his transmission from Mālik in al-Mudawwana, as well as Yahyā’s transmission from Ibn al-Qāsim in al-ʿUtbiyya.

The second is that mines belong to the land in which they lie. If they lie in free land, land conquered by force, or unowned wilderness, authority over them rests with the ruler, who grants them to someone to work