a debt for which he is personally liable, not the people he has wronged. He does not own what is in his possession; rather, it belongs to unidentified people whom he does not know. He may not dispose of their property without their permission.

On this basis, there are two views:

One view is that a person in authority, such as a judge or anyone else empowered to administer the affairs of absent persons, should settle the debts they owe the seller out of their funds in the seller’s possession.

The other view is that the seller may recover the debt they owe him from their funds in his possession, without seeking a judge’s permission. This is the sounder view, for someone with an established entitlement may recover it from the property of the person who owes it, without needing the judge’s permission. Thus, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, permitted a guest denied his due hospitality to take what was due to him from his host’s crops without the host’s permission. Likewise, he instructed a woman to take, without her husband’s permission, what would reasonably suffice for herself and her child. However, where the entitlement is denied, he said:

“Return what has been entrusted to you to the one who entrusted you with it, and do not betray someone who has betrayed you.”

How much more, then, does this apply when someone has sold another person a commodity through an invalid sale and received the price from him! He is all the more entitled to recover what he is owed from that commodity.

As for the position of the majority of scholars, who hold that contracts may remain pending approval, allowing gratuitous dispositions to be given effect when necessary, they say that someone holding property acquired by usurpation, entrusted for safekeeping, or borrowed for use, whose particular owner he cannot identify, should give it in charity on the owner’s behalf. This is the view of Mālik and Abū