The increase that the usurper produces in the seized property, according to the report of Ibn al-Qāsim from Mālik, falls into two broad categories:

1. He adds to the property some material of his own that has an independent, corporeal existence—such as dye applied to a garment or ornamental carving inserted into a building.

2. He contributes nothing but his labor—sewing, weaving, milling wheat, or fashioning a plank of wood into coffins, and the like.

Regarding the first category—where the usurper has incorporated something of his own substance—it is further divided into two cases:

• The added substance can be removed and the article restored to its original condition, as when he erects a structure on a vacant lot.

• The added substance cannot practically be removed, as when he dyes a garment or kneads roasted barley-flour (sawīq) with fat.

For the first case, the person from whom the property was usurped may choose either (a) to compel the usurper to return the lot to its former state and to strip out whatever he inserted—stones, bricks, or anything else—or (b) to pay the usurper the value of those materials once removed, after deducting the cost of demolition. This deduction applies when the usurper would have to hire workers to do the removal himself; some jurists, however, say that the cost of removal is not to be deducted. If the materials have no market value, the usurper has no claim at all, for the owner is entitled to have his property restored as it was, and if he waives that right the usurper has nothing to demand.

In the second case, where restoration is impossible—such as dye in a garment—the owner is likewise given a choice: he may pay the value of the dye (or its like) and recover his garment, or he may hold the usurper liable for the garment’s full value as of the day it was seized. An exception is made for sawīq mixed with ghee and similar foodstuffs, for choosing in that context would entail ribā; the matter is treated as total loss, obligating the usurper to provide an exact equivalent, or, where none exists, to pay its market value.

As for the second main category—where the usurper contributes only labor—this too divides into two subdivisions:

• The work is slight and does not change the article’s identity, such as stitching a garment or adding a simple hem.

• The work is substantial and transforms the article’s very name, as when wood is fashioned into a coffin, grain is ground into flour, yarn is woven into cloth, or silver is minted into jewelry or coins.

In the first of these two, the usurper acquires no right whatever; the owner simply takes back his property in its worked state. In the second, the change is deemed a form of destruction, requiring the usurper to hand over the like of the original article where a like exists, or its value as of the day of usurpation where no like exists. Such is Ibn al-Qāsim’s detailed view on the matter.

Ashhab, by contrast, awards the entirety of these increases to the owner. Building on the foundational case of construction on usurped land, he maintains that the usurper has no entitlement to things he cannot physically retrieve—dye, hemming, weaving, tanning, milling, and the rest.