Likewise, reasoning from the principles of Ahmad and other jurists of the hadith tradition entails permitting the sale of the produce of cucumber patches, both concealed and visible, once signs of ripeness appear, even if this includes selling produce not yet in existence. Similarly, there is agreement that once signs of ripeness appear in some of the fruit of a date palm or another tree, all its fruit may be sold, even though some of it has not yet begun to ripen.

The most they have offered to justify treating this as an exception to analogy is to say that the ripening fruit of a single palm cannot be sold separately: if a single unripe date were sold under a separate contract, it would become indistinguishable from the others within a single day, since a date can turn yellow that very day. Yet precisely the same applies to a cucumber patch.

Some followers of al-Shāfiʿī and Ahmad have sought to explain away the sale of nonexistent produce as an adjunct by arguing that any growth in the fruit after the contract is not an adjunct to what already exists; rather, it belongs to the purchaser because it comes into being within his ownership. The majority in both schools recognize that this explanation is unsound. The seller is obliged to water the fruit, and the purchaser is entitled, by the contract alone, to leave it on the trees. Were the purchaser not entitled to its further growth under the contract, the seller would not be obliged to provide what brings that growth about. For the seller’s obligation under the sale is to deliver in full the goods stipulated by the contract, not whatever follows from ownership itself.

Moreover, the reports from Ahmad differ concerning the case where signs of ripeness appear in