or to take it as it is, recovering—according to Ibn al-Qāsim—the amount by which the injury reduced its value on the very day the injury occurred, while Sahnūn holds that the reduction is calculated against its value on the day of usurpation.

Ashhab maintains that the owner is free either to make the usurper liable for the full value or to accept the property in its diminished state, in which case he receives nothing for the injury itself; he likens this to loss caused by an act of heaven, and Ibn al-Mawwāz concurs.

The cause of this divergence is that those who limit the usurper’s liability to the item’s value on the day of usurpation treat every subsequent increase or decrease as though it occurred under lawful ownership: they award him the produce and impose no liability for any deficiency, whether of his making or by the decree of God. This is the logical extension of Abū Ḥanīfah’s view.

In summary: one approach confines liability to the value on the day of usurpation; another regards the usurped property as a continuous liability upon the usurper for as long as it remains in his hand, binding him to the highest value it attains, obliging him to surrender all produce, and requiring compensation for every deficiency, whether caused by him or by an act of God. This is al-Shāfiʿī’s position, or an inference from it.

Those who distinguish between damage inflicted by the usurper himself and damage resulting from an act of heaven—a distinction famously attributed to Mālik and Ibn al-Qāsim—do so by an analogy of resemblance: they view the usurper’s damaging the item in his possession as a renewed, secondary act of usurpation, just as though he had injured it while it was still the property of its rightful owner. This is the pivotal point of disagreement in this section; take note of it.

If the injury occurs while the property is with the usurper but without any action on his part, the owner may either hold the usurper liable for its value on the day of usurpation and leave him to pursue the actual offender, or forgo the usurper and proceed directly against the offender under the rules governing torts. Such is the ruling on injuries to property in a usurper’s hand.

When the property has not been usurped at all and is then injured, Mālik divides the matter into two categories:

1. Damage that eliminates only a small portion of its usefulness while the main purpose remains. In this case the offender must pay the amount of the diminution as assessed on the day of injury: the item is valued both sound and damaged, and the difference is paid.

2. Damage that destroys the intended purpose entirely. Here the owner may, if he wishes, surrender the damaged item to the offender and take its full value, or he may opt merely for the diminished value corresponding to the injury. Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfah hold that he is entitled only to the diminished value.

The reason for their dispute is whether to treat the case analogously to that of a usurper and to regard the loss of most of the utility as equivalent to destruction of the very substance.

As for increase, it is of two kinds:

1. Increase that comes about by God’s act, such as a young animal’s growth, a lean one becoming fat, or a defect disappearing.

2. Increase produced by the usurper’s own action.

The first is not treated as a ‘loss.’

Regarding the second—where the usurper effects an increase in the usurped item—Ibn al-Qāsim relates from Mālik that it is further subdivided into two categories: