Ibn Wahb reports from Mālik that a term of two or three days is acceptable, while Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam sees no objection to fixing it at even a single day.
If delivery is to be taken in another town, they reckon the deadline by the time needed to cover the distance between the two towns, whether that distance be short or long. Abū Ḥanīfah, however, stipulates that it may not be less than three days.
Hence, anyone who treats the term as a bare, non-rationalised condition is satisfied with the shortest period to which the word “term” can still apply; whereas whoever links the condition to possible price fluctuations demands a span of days within which the markets customarily do fluctuate.
As for setting the deadline at the time of date-stripping, harvesting, and the like, Mālik permits it, whereas Abū Ḥanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī forbid it. Those who judge the uncertainty in such deadlines to be slight allow the practice, for minor gharar is excused in the Law; they compare it to the variation that occurs in lunar months when a day is added or omitted. Those who deem the uncertainty excessive—greater than that caused by incomplete or complete months—do not allow it.
- The second question is whether salam requires the commodity’s genus to exist at the moment the contract is concluded. Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, Isḥāq, and Abū Thawr do not impose this requirement; they hold that salam may be concluded outside the commodity’s season. Abū Ḥanīfah and his companions, al-Thawrī, and al-Awzāʿī maintain that salam is valid only during the commodity’s actual season.
Those who waive the season invoke the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās: “People used to conclude salam in dates for two and even three years ahead, and they were allowed to do so without being forbidden.” The Ḥanafīs rely on the report from Ibn ʿUmar that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “Do not transact salam in date-palms until their soundness is manifest.” They consider the gharar greater when the commodity does not yet exist at the time of contract, bringing the case closer to selling what has not come into existence—though here the liability rests on a debt in the buyer’s liability, and the goods are not individually specified. In this way salam differs from selling what has not yet been created.
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Regarding the third condition—the place of delivery—Abū Ḥanīfah required that it be stipulated, by analogy with fixing the time, whereas the others, who form the majority, did not. Qāḍī Abū Muḥammad held that stipulating it is preferable, while Ibn al-Mawwāz deemed it unnecessary.
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Concerning the fourth condition—that the price be precisely determined by volume, weight, count, or measure and not left indeterminate—Abū Ḥanīfah insists upon it, whereas al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfah’s two companions, Abū Yūsuf,