a lease can concern only intangible benefits and cannot confer entitlement to tangible things. Yet nothing in the Quran, the Sunnah, consensus, or legal analogy supports this restriction. Rather, the foundational principles establish that tangible things produced gradually while their source remains are governed by the same rules as benefits of use, as with fruit and trees, and milk in animals.

For this reason, the two are treated alike in endowments. The governing principle is to retain the underlying property and dedicate its benefit. The underlying property must therefore remain, while its benefit arises from it. Thus, the benefit of an endowment may be a right of use, such as residence; it may be fruit, as when trees are endowed; or it may be milk, as when livestock are endowed so that their milk may be used.

The same applies to “gratuitous transfers.” Loans for use, fruit grants, and milk grants all involve giving property to someone who benefits from it and then returns it. A milk grant consists in giving livestock to someone who drinks their milk and then returns them. A fruit grant consists in giving a tree to someone who eats its fruit and then returns it. A grant of residence consists in giving a house to someone who lives in it and then returns it.

Likewise, in leasing, one sometimes leases property for a benefit that is not itself a tangible thing, such as residence or riding, and sometimes for tangible things produced gradually while their source remains, such as a wet nurse’s milk or the water of a well or spring. Since water and milk are produced gradually while their source remains, they are treated like benefits of use. What justifies leasing is the feature shared by both: the gradual production of what the contract is intended to provide, whether what arises is a tangible thing or a benefit of use, since the fact that it is