The jurists disagree over four additional matters:
First: whether fixing a term for delivery is an essential condition of salam.
Second: whether it is a condition that the genus of the commodity to be delivered already exist at the moment the contract is concluded.
Third: whether the place of delivery must be stipulated.
Fourth: whether the price must be precisely determined—by measure, weight, or number—so that it is not left indeterminate.
- As for the term:
• Abū Ḥanīfah holds, without any dissent reported from him, that stipulating a term is a prerequisite for the validity of salam.
• Mālik, in the outward and well-known view of his school, likewise counts it a condition, though some of his reports could be construed to allow salam payable on the spot.
• Al-Lakhmī offers a distinction: in the Mālikī school salam is of two kinds—immediate salam, employed by one whose regular trade involves that very commodity, and deferred salam, used by one who does not normally sell it.
Those who require a fixed term advance two arguments:
- the explicit wording of the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās; and
- that, without a stipulated term, the transaction would amount to the forbidden sale of what the seller does not yet possess.
Al-Shāfiʿī, by contrast, reasons that if a deferred term is permissible, then an immediate settlement is even more so, because it entails less uncertainty (gharar). The Shāfiʿīs sometimes cite the report:
“The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—bought a camel from a Bedouin for a wasq of dates. When he entered the house he found no dates, so he borrowed some and gave them to him.”
They say: this is a spot purchase for dates that remained a debt.
The Mālikīs, arguing from rationale, reply that salam was only permitted as a facilitation, because the seller desires the advance payment; if no term is set, that rationale disappears.
The scholars also disagreed about the term in two respects:
- may it be defined by something other than days and months—such as the time of fruit cutting, grape gathering, harvesting, or the marketing season? and
- what is the minimum length when reckoned in days?
The gist of Mālik’s position on the latter is as follows:
The commodity may be claimed in either of two ways—within the town where the contract is made, or elsewhere. If delivery is to occur in the same town, Ibn al-Qāsim says the term must cover a span during which market prices can vary, roughly fifteen days or so.