as when uncultivated land is granted to someone who will bring it into cultivation and acquire ownership of it.

And a grant of the right to derive income: this assigns the usufruct of the land to someone who may cultivate it himself, lease it out, or enter into a sharecropping agreement over it, as he wishes.

The grant in question belongs to this second category. These grantees were not merely assigned tax payable on land held by someone, such as the land tax prescribed by the Sharia which the Commander of the Faithful, ʿUmar, imposed on territories conquered by force, or the rents owed by those who lease property belonging to the public treasury. Anyone assigned such revenues has been granted tax income. These grantees, however, were assigned the usufruct itself.

Once this distinction is understood, if a grant terminates while the arrangement is still in progress—whether because the grantee dies or for some other reason—and is reassigned to someone else, the usufruct accruing thereafter belongs to the second grantee, not the first. Thus, if the first grantee had leased out the granted land and his grant subsequently terminated, that lease would also terminate. This is comparable to the termination of a lease granted by the first generation of an endowment’s beneficiaries when entitlement to the endowment passes to the second generation, according to the sounder of the two juristic views.

Accordingly, if the grant was transferred halfway through the term, the second grantee would be entitled to half the usufruct. If it concerned its past yield, he would be entitled to the income from the usufruct. If the revenue officials awarded the second grantee three-quarters of the usufruct due under the grant, and the first one-quarter, because the second had performed three-quarters for a hundred and thereby become entitled to the grant,