as when only a slave’s face is seen. They likewise differed concerning cucumber crops sold together with their roots, as is generally customary.

Some later scholars said:

This is permissible, because selling vegetable plants is like selling trees. If someone sells a tree bearing fruit whose soundness has not yet become apparent, the sale is permissible; the same therefore applies here. This was also stated to be the position of Abū Hanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī.

The earlier scholars said:

This is impermissible under all circumstances. This is both the meaning of Ahmad’s words and his explicitly recorded position. What he prohibited was precisely the customary practice, and it is not customary to sell melons or either kind of cucumber without their roots. Moreover, he does not concede the ruling in the case on which they base their analogy.

His explicit ruling, as transmitted by al-Athram and Ibrāhīm ibn al-Hārith, concerning trees bearing fruit whose soundness has not yet become apparent, is that the sale is permissible if the tree itself is the purchaser’s principal object. But if his object is the fruit and he purchases the tree along with it as a legal stratagem, it is impermissible.

Likewise, if someone purchases land containing crops or fruit-bearing trees before their produce has shown signs of soundness, then, if the land is his intended object, the fruit and crops may be included with it as subordinate elements. But if the fruit and crops are his intended object, and he purchases the land for their sake, it is impermissible.

If this is his position concerning the fruit of trees, then it is clear that what is sought from cucumber and melon plots is the produce, not the plants themselves, whose value is small compared with that of the vegetables.

Ibn ʿAqīl and others have derived two juristic views concerning this: