and it is the ruling that ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb gave in a comparable case. It is the soundest of the views. Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī had accumulated funds belonging to the Muslims which he intended to send to ʿUmar. When ʿUmar’s two sons passed by him, he said:

“I cannot give you anything, but I have funds that I wish to send to him. Take them, trade with them, and pay him an equivalent amount. You will thus have benefited, while the funds will have reached him, with you both guaranteeing their repayment.”

They bought merchandise with the funds. When they came to ʿUmar, he asked, “Did he grant everyone in the ʿushr the same terms he granted you two?”

“No,” they replied.

“Then place all the profit in the public treasury,” he said. ʿAbd Allāh remained silent, but ʿUbayd Allāh asked him, “Tell me: had this money been lost, would we not have been liable for it?”

“Yes,” he replied.

“Then how can the profit belong to the Muslims while the liability rests with us?”

ʿUmar paused. The Companions then said to him, “Treat it as a profit-sharing partnership between the two of them and the Muslims: half the profit belongs to them, and half to the Muslims.” ʿUmar acted accordingly.

This is the best of the views disputed by the jurists concerning trading with money entrusted for safekeeping or other funds belonging to someone else. There are four views on this within the school of Ahmad and among other jurists. Does the profit belong to the public treasury, on the grounds that it is … (1) the capital? Or does the profit belong to the trader, because he acquired ownership by undertaking personal liability for the purchase of the goods? Should the two give the profit in charity because it is tainted, or divide it between themselves as in a profit-sharing partnership?

This fourth view is the one ʿUmar acted upon, and it was relied upon by those jurists who invoked it in support of