Book of Murābaḥah Sales
The scholars unanimously agree that sales are of two kinds: bargaining (musāwamah) and murābaḥah. Murābaḥah is a transaction in which the seller discloses to the buyer the price at which he himself purchased the goods and then stipulates a definite profit—so much per dinar or per dirham.
They differ, however, on two broad questions:
First: which post-purchase expenses the seller may legitimately treat as part of the capital cost of the goods, and which he may not.
Second: the ruling when the seller either lies to the buyer by claiming that he paid more for the goods than he really did, or errs by stating a lower price than he actually paid and later discovers that the real price was higher.
In this book, therefore, according to the divergent views of the jurists of the various regions, there are two chapters:
Chapter One
On what may and may not be reckoned as capital, and on the nature of the capital upon which profit may be calculated.
Chapter Two
On the legal consequences of any excess or deficiency in the seller’s disclosure of the purchase price.
[Chapter One: What is and is not included in the price in a murābaḥah sale]
Chapter One
On what may and may not be counted as capital, and on the description of the capital upon which profit may properly be based.
As to what is—and is not—reckoned in the price: the distilled view of Mālik is that any additional outlay the seller makes on the goods beyond the original purchase price falls into three categories:
- Expenses that are added to the capital and are entitled to a share of the profit;
- Expenses that are added to the capital but are not entitled to any share of the profit; and
- Expenses that are neither added to the capital nor entitled to any share of the profit.
The expenditures he includes in the capital and accords a share of the profit are those that alter the very substance of the commodity, such as tailoring or dyeing.
Those he includes in the capital but to which he assigns no share of the profit are the expenses that do not alter the substance of the commodity and that the seller himself cannot normally perform—such as transporting the goods from one town to another or renting the buildings in which they are stored.
As for the expenses that he counts in neither of the two previous categories, they are those that do not affect the substance of the commodity and