has any right.”

The reason is that this Prophetic statement—peace and blessings be upon him—was occasioned by a particular case: a slave-boy whose sale price had been reduced because of a defect. The seller then wished the buyer to return the slave’s earnings. Whenever a text couched in general terms is uttered for the sake of a specific incident, the scholars of the various regions famously disagree: must it be restricted to that incident, or does its general wording stand?

Those who confine the ruling to its original cause say: “Yield becomes due by virtue of liability only when the property reaches a person under some colorable claim—such as purchasing an item, profiting from it, and then having it successfully claimed by its true owner. But whatever comes into one’s hands with no semblance of right entitles him to no yield, for he is a wrongdoer, and ‘no wrongful root has any right.’ Accordingly, they apply this latter ḥadīth broadly to both the principal and the yield, while limiting the former ḥadīth to its own case.”

Others invert the matter: they generalize the Prophet’s words, “The yield accompanies liability,” extending them beyond the incident for which they were spoken, while restricting the statement, “No wrongful root has any right,” to the corpus alone and not to its yield. Such scholars therefore maintain, “The usurper does not have to return the yield.”

From the standpoint of pure analogy, as we have already noted, usufruct and derivative objects should be treated alike: either liability is considered in both, or it is ignored in both. All intermediary positions are no more than juristic preference (istihsān).

The scholars are unanimously agreed that anyone who plants date-palms—or, more generally, any fruit trees—or erects a building on land that is not his must be ordered to uproot what he has planted or demolish what he has built. Their proof is the report transmitted by Mālik from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said:

“Whoever revives dead land, it is his; and no wrongful root has any right.”

Here, “wrongful root” means whatever is planted in another man’s land.

Abū Dāwūd relates an additional detail in this tradition. ʿUrwah said: “The one who told me this ḥadīth also told me that two men once brought their case to the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—after one of them had planted date-palms in the other’s land. The Prophet awarded the land to its owner and ordered the planter to remove his palms. I later saw that plot myself: the roots were being hacked with axes while the palms were already full-grown until they were all removed.”

An exception is the well-known opinion reported from Mālik: “If someone sows a crop on another man’s land and the season for sowing has already passed, the landowner may not uproot the crop; instead, the sower must pay rent for the land.” A second report from him, however, approximates the analogy adopted by the majority.

According to this latter view, anything from which the usurper gains no benefit once he has uprooted and removed it reverts to the owner of the property; on that basis, the crop would belong to the sower.

Some jurists distinguish between crops and fruit, saying: