and repayment of a loan: if we have already disposed of these funds, we bear no ultimate liability to replace them. Here, however, the jurists disagree over a “question”: may the owner demand compensation from the deceived person in whose possession the property was lost, who may then recover from the deceiver whatever he paid because of the deception? Or may the owner demand from the deceived person only what ultimately falls within his own liability? There are two views, both reported from Ahmad.

A similar case arises when a man unlawfully seizes a slave woman, and another man buys her from him—or receives her from him as a gift—and has children by her. The Companions and the imams agree that her children by the deceived man are free, because the man who had intercourse with her did not know that she belonged to someone else; rather, he believed that she belonged to him. They agree that a child follows the mother in freedom or slavery, and the father in lineage and patronage. Nevertheless, they ruled that his child was free because the father did not know, and what is unknown is treated as nonexistent.

They also awarded the slave woman’s master compensation for the child, because he would have been entitled to the child were it not for the deception. Since the children passed out of his ownership without right, he was entitled to compensation for them. They also awarded him the dower due for a slave woman.

According to the sounder of the two views, these payments are owed by the wrongdoing deceiver who unlawfully seized and sold the slave woman. The deceived purchaser owes only what he undertook by contract: the purchase price alone. But may her owner demand compensation for the child’s freedom and the dower from the deceived purchaser, who may then recover those payments from the wrongdoing deceiver? Or may he demand payment only from the wrongdoing deceiver? There are two views, both reported from Ahmad.

There is no disagreement within the Muslim community that his intercourse with her was not unlawful and that his child is legitimately born, not illegitimate. He is thus a legitimate child, not a child of