necessarily entails that contractual effect. The contracting parties, however, are bound by what they mutually agree upon and make the basis of their contract. Sometimes they agree to exchange possession immediately afterward, and sometimes they agree to defer possession, as with fruit. A contract without a specified term calls for immediate performance, but they may defer it when doing so serves their interests. The same applies to tangible property. If the property sold carries a benefit belonging to the seller or someone else—as with trees bearing visible fruit, property under lease, or property whose use the seller has reserved for a period—the contract does not entitle the buyer to demand what is not his and what he has not acquired. Just as the seller may sell one part of a property without another, he may sell it without its usufruct.

Whether one says that the buyer takes possession of the property or that he does not take possession of it at all makes no difference here. Taking possession is not a requirement for completing a sale contract as it is for a pledge. Rather, the buyer acquires ownership as a consequence of the sale before taking possession, and any increase or yield of the property belongs to him, without dispute, even while it remains in the seller’s hands. The effect of taking possession concerns either liability for loss or the right to dispose of the property. It is authentically reported that Ibn ʿUmar said:

“The established Sunnah is that whatever is alive and intact when the sale is concluded is at the buyer’s risk.”

This is therefore the position adopted by the scholars of Medina and the scholars of hadith. Making liability depend on having the opportunity to take possession is sounder than making it depend on actually taking possession, and this is what the Sunnah establishes. In the case of fruit struck by a calamity, the buyer had not had the opportunity to harvest it