for he learned these principles from Sa‘īd ibn al-Musayyib, of whom it was said: “He is the most knowledgeable of people concerning sales.” Likewise, it was said: “‘Atā’ is the most knowledgeable concerning the pilgrimage rites, Ibrāhīm concerning prayer, and al-Hasan the most comprehensively knowledgeable in all these matters.” Accordingly, anyone who examines Ahmad’s answers systematically will find that he agreed with each of these Successors on most matters within that scholar’s particular field of distinction.

Imam Ahmad generally agrees with Mālik on these matters. Both prohibit ribā and take a properly stringent stance against it, given its emphatic prohibition and the enormity of its harm, as explained above. They prohibit every means of circumventing its prohibition, even barring means that lead to it without themselves constituting a legal stratagem. Although Mālik goes further in blocking such means in matters on which Ahmad’s position does not vary, or adopts positions Ahmad does not hold, Ahmad nevertheless agrees with him, with no differing position reported from him, that all such stratagems are prohibited.

These stratagems fall into two broad categories: adding something not genuinely intended to one of the two items exchanged, or attaching a contract not genuinely intended to the principal contract.

The first is the issue known as “a mudd of ‘ajwa dates.” Its defining feature is exchanging a commodity subject to the rules of ribā for another of the same kind, with something of a different kind added to both sides or to one of them. For example, the parties may intend to exchange silver for silver in unequal amounts, or something similar, and so add another item to the smaller amount of silver. This can go so far as selling one thousand dinars wrapped in a cloth for two thousand dinars. Whenever the purpose is to exchange a commodity subject to the rules of ribā for an unequal amount of the same kind, the “mudd of ‘ajwa dates” transaction is prohibited, without disagreement according to Mālik, Ahmad, and others. Only those Kufan scholars who permit legal stratagems allow such transactions, even though