This also includes liability for wrongfully seized property when the property itself cannot be returned. Entrusted property is likewise treated as wrongfully seized if its custodian betrays his trust. Such trusts include Muslim property entrusted to officials administering fay’ revenues, zakah and charitable endowments; orphans’ property; a principal’s property held by a business partner, a profit-sharing investment manager or the like; and fay’ revenues—when those entrusted with them betray their trust and the property itself cannot be returned. The same applies to selling a person’s property to meet his obligatory maintenance expenses for his wife, his children or himself. In short, whenever someone owes a financial obligation that can be discharged only by selling property, the sale becomes obligatory: he may be compelled to undertake it, and it may be carried out without his consent.

An example of the second case is someone in dire need of another person’s food, whose owner offers it to him for more than its value. He may take it at its fair market value, for the owner is obliged both to sell it and to sell it at that value. If he refuses both requirements, he is compelled to fulfil both; if he agrees to one, he is compelled to fulfil the other. This issue is discussed in the “Book of Foods.” Indeed, if the owner refuses to provide the food, the person in dire need may fight him for it, since he is in the position of someone fighting to defend his own life.

For this reason, we hold those who withhold it liable for his blood money if he dies. It is reported that a man asked some people for water, but they gave him none until he died, so Umar held them liable for his blood money. Ahmad adopted this ruling. For if feeding a person in dire need without payment is obligatory when he cannot afford to pay, then providing food in return for payment is all the more clearly obligatory. The same applies when people face a widespread emergency while some people have surplus food