Abū Ḥanīfah’s principal proof is that the loss of the means by which the benefit is enjoyed is effectively the loss of the very asset in which that benefit inheres.

Mālik’s statements diverge when the lease does not relate to a specific item yet is concluded for the performance of a benefit of a particular kind. ʿAbd al-Wahhāb explains: “The outward sense of our school is that the place where the benefits are to be taken is not fixed by the contract; and even if it is identified, the identification is merely descriptive. Therefore, if that place is sold or disappears the lease is not dissolved—unlike the case of the hired asset itself, which would terminate the contract were it to perish.

“An example is hiring someone to pasture designated sheep or to sew a particular shirt. Should the sheep die or the garment burn, the contract is not void; rather, the employer must provide other sheep of the same type for pasturing, or another shirt of the same sort for sewing.

“Some, however, have said that once the subject is specified it becomes determinative, and the contract is annulled upon its destruction.”

Later scholars observed that this is not a true disagreement within the school but a matter of two categories. The first is where the specified subject of the benefit is something whose very individuality is intended; in that case the lease is dissolved—like a wet-nurse when the child dies. The second is where the individual identity is not intended; here the lease is not dissolved—for example, shepherding given sheep or selling provisions in a shop.

Ibn al-Qāsim’s stipulation in the Mudawwanah that one who is hired in respect of particular sheep may only contract if a replacement clause is included is his acknowledgement that the lease would lapse should the subject of benefit disappear. Because he saw the possibility of such loss leading to rescission, he regarded the arrangement as involving gharar, and therefore permitted it only on condition that substitutes be provided.

A similar debate concerns whether a lease lapses with the death of either party to the contract—the lessor or the lessee. Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, Isḥāq, and Abū Thawr hold that it does not lapse and that the lease is transferable to the heirs. Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Thawrī, and al-Layth maintain that it is annulled.

Those who deny rescission argue that the lease is a contract of exchange and, like sale, is not dissolved by the death of either party. The Ḥanafīs counter that death moves ownership of the underlying corpus from one estate to another, and therefore the contract must cease—just as the sale of an asset that is under a long-term lease is not permitted. Because the two contracts cannot coexist, the transfer of ownership prevails; otherwise the asset would remain ownerless, contravening consensus. They sometimes liken leasing to marriage, both being contracts for the enjoyment of benefits; marriage ends with death, they say, though the comparison is weak.

They press this argument chiefly against the Mālikīs, noting that in that school rent becomes due piece by piece in proportion to the benefit received. If the owner dies while the lease remains, the tenant would be drawing benefit in the heir’s property by virtue of a contract concluded by someone who no longer owns it—an arrangement they deem invalid. If the tenant dies, rent would fall due against him after death, whereas by consensus no debt is incurred against the deceased thereafter.

The Shāfiʿīs are not affected by this objection, for in their view the rent becomes due in full upon conclusion of the contract, as noted earlier.