its assessed value. When payment falls due, however, he is entitled to recover no more than that from the original purchaser, lest he have paid dinars in exchange for a greater amount, thereby completing a usurious transaction between them. This accords with what appears in Sahnūn’s transmission in the Book of Advance-Payment Sales and Deferred Terms.

(The third) is that if the assessed value is less than the price, both sales are rescinded, and the seller is entitled to recover from the purchaser only the price he paid him. If the assessed value is greater than the price, only the second sale is rescinded, and he is ordered to pay the assessed value; then, when payment falls due, he receives the sale price. This is the interpretation of Ibn al-Qāsim’s position adopted by ʿAbd al-Haqq, and it is Sahnūn’s explicitly stated opinion.

In some versions of the hadith of ʿĀʾisha, may Allah be pleased with her, the wording is: “How evil was your sale—or, how evil was your purchase!” The uncertainty is the narrator’s. According to this version, therefore, the hadith provides no evidence against Ibn al-Qāsim.

If the transaction mentioned in the hadith took place between Zayd ibn Arqam’s slave woman who had borne him a child and her master, while she still held that status and had not yet been definitively emancipated, then ʿĀʾisha’s statement, may Allah be pleased with her, would reflect the prohibition of usury between a slave and his master, together with the prohibition of means leading to unlawful ends. Zayd ibn Arqam’s action would reflect either his allowing the former or his allowing such means. If, however, the transaction took place after she had been definitively emancipated, then Zayd ibn Arqam’s action would reflect his allowing such means.

Our teacher, the jurist Ibn Rizq, used to consider this hadith of ʿĀʾisha weak because of her statement in it: “Tell Zayd that he has nullified his striving alongside the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, unless he repents.” This, he held, contradicts what the Quran states: that good deeds remove evil deeds, and that deeds are nullified only through apostasy. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, says:

“If you associate others with Allah, your deeds will surely come to nothing.” [al-Zumar: 65]

And He says:

“Whoever among you renounces his religion and dies a disbeliever—their deeds will come to nothing in this world and the Hereafter.” [al-Baqara: 217]

This is assuming it were permissible to suppose that, beneath the outward form of the two sales, Zayd ibn Arqam’s actual arrangement with the woman who had borne him a child was to receive six hundred dinars from her in exchange for eight hundred payable at a specified date. Yet no Muslim may interpret his action in this way. Thus, according to every one of the imams, what he did entails neither sin nor blame in his relationship with his Creator,