should the article sold be a tract of land that the buyer has planted, or an empty lot on which he has erected a building.

Mālik said: The additional work constitutes an irreversible transformation, so the item is deemed lost and the owner of the merchandise reverts to being simply one of the creditors.

Al-Shāfiʿī, however, held that the seller is given a choice: either he pays the value of what the buyer has added to the goods and then repossesses them, or he takes back the original goods and joins the other creditors with respect to the increment. What does and does not count as “loss” in Mālik’s school is explicitly set out in his well-known manuals.

A concise statement of Mālik’s doctrine concerning the situations in which an individual creditor enjoys priority over the rest—whether in both death and bankruptcy, or in bankruptcy alone—is as follows. Goods sold on credit, when the purchaser becomes insolvent, fall into three categories:

1. Merchandise (ʿaraḍ) whose specific identity is agreed upon.

2. Specie (ʿayn) about which there is disagreement: is its identity fixed or not?

3. Services (ʿamal) whose identity is not fixed.

4. Merchandise
   • If the goods are still in the hands of the seller when the buyer goes bankrupt, the seller has the strongest claim to them in both death and bankruptcy, and there is no dispute about this.
   • If the seller has already delivered them and the buyer then becomes bankrupt while the goods are still intact in his possession, the seller has priority over the creditors in bankruptcy but not in death; in that case the creditors may take the goods from him at the purchase price.
   – Al-Shāfiʿī said: they have no such right.
   – Ashhab said: they may only take them if they add an increment, which they then deduct from the insolvent debtor.
   – Ibn al-Mājishūn said: if they wish, the price may be paid out of their own property or out of the debtor’s estate.
   – Ibn Kinānah said: it must come out of their own property.

5. Specie (gold or silver)
   The seller likewise has priority to it in the event of death, and in bankruptcy as long as it is still in his possession. If he has already handed it over and the buyer dies or goes bankrupt while the coins are still intact and recognizable, the jurists differed:
   – One view, reported from Ibn al-Qāsim, gives the seller priority in bankruptcy but not in death, treating it like merchandise.
   – Another, reported from Ashhab, says he has no claim and is merely one of the creditors. The two opinions turn on the underlying disagreement over whether the specie is a specifically identified object. If the very coins cannot be identified, the seller is, in both death and bankruptcy, like the rest of the creditors.

6. Services without a fixed identity
   • If the lessee becomes insolvent before he has received the employee’s labour, the employee has the strongest claim to the work he has already performed, in both death and bankruptcy, just as the seller does when the goods are still in his hand at the moment of insolvency.
   • If the insolvency occurs after the worker has delivered his labour, the employee stands with the other creditors for the wage that was stipulated, in both bankruptcy and death, according to the more prominent opinion—unless the goods on which he worked are still in his possession. In that case he has priority in both situations, because what he holds resembles a pledge. If he surrenders possession he becomes like the other creditors for the value of his labour, unless he owns something in the goods that he himself provided; then he enjoys priority in bankruptcy but not in death.
   The same ruling applies, in Mālik’s view, to the insolvency of one who hires riding animals or charters a ship: the owner has priority to the goods placed upon them in both death and bankruptcy. Mālik likened all of this to the case of collateral held as a pledge.

In short, there is no disagreement within his school that the seller has the strongest claim to whatever remains in his own hand in both death and bankruptcy, and to the merchandise that is still intact after leaving his hand in bankruptcy but not in death; if the goods are no longer extant, he is simply on a par with the other creditors. And whenever