move about because of old age or weakness. Among them are children who have not yet reached puberty, widows, and people with disabilities. Others are engaged in sacred learning and reciting the Quran, or provide a general benefit to the Muslims and have a share in the public treasury.

Among them are also those in charge of lodges and hospices, who devote themselves exclusively to worship and receiving visitors: jurists, scholars, and other wayfarers. Others are the orphaned children of soldiers and others martyred in the path of Allah Most High, who have not left them enough to meet their needs. There are also those who request permission to bring uncultivated land into use and do so, or reclaim high-lying ahrās so that they may retain them after their reclamation. They have brought them into cultivation over many years, and their tenure has become established according to the prevailing customs in such matters.

Do these circumstances justify their receiving what they have been granted—what the Muslim kings and their deputies allocated to them in the public interest, and which has remained in their possession until now—or not? What is the ruling concerning someone who declares them ineligible despite their possessing these qualifications, and seeks favour with the sultan by striving to cut off their stipends, thereby causing the closure of the lodges and most of the lodges and hospices that benefit wayfarers and others devoted exclusively to worship, and in which the public observances of Islam are maintained? Is he thereby sinful and disobedient, or not?

Must these people be required to prove their entitlement, even though these allocations have remained in their possession by authorization of those in authority?

If they were required to do so, would they have to establish it before one particular judge