Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī lent money from the public treasury to Umar’s two sons, who brought it to their father.

Umar demanded all the profit because he regarded this as akin to wrongful appropriation: Abū Mūsā had lent to them but not to other Muslims, although the money belonged to them all. When one partner trades with jointly owned wealth without the other’s permission, he is like someone who wrongfully appropriates his partner’s share. His son Abdullah said to him:

“We bore the liability, so the profit should be ours.”

One of the Companions then advised Umar to treat it as a profit-sharing partnership. These three opinions concerning such a case are found among the jurists—including three opinions within Ahmad’s school and elsewhere: when someone trades with another person’s wealth without his permission, does the profit belong to the owner of the capital, to the worker, or to both? These are the three opinions.

The best of them, and the most consistent with analogy, is that the profit should be shared between them, as Umar ruled, because the increase is generated by both contributing resources. If, in the foundational precedent for profit-sharing partnerships on which they rely, they took account of the partnership we have described, then receiving the equivalent of the dirhams is treated as receiving the original coins themselves. This is why the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and the Muslims after him called a loan a manīhah (a grant of use). Thus, the expression is used:

“A manīhah of silver.”

People also say:

“Lend me your dirhams.”

They treat returning the equivalent of the dirhams as returning the very object lent for use: the borrower has benefited from the dirhams and returned them. They also called a profit-sharing partnership qirād, because, among transactions involving consideration, it is the counterpart of a loan among gratuitous transactions.

It may also be said: If the distinction they mention had any bearing on the ruling, then its support