for beneficial use in return for consideration, as when someone says, “Throw your goods into the sea, and I will pay their value.” This is undoubtedly permissible, because the person undertaking payment benefits from lightening the load, just as he benefits by undertaking payment here. Thus, burning candles for a charge is permissible provided their consumption is known. However, they must be burned for a permissible purpose, not a prohibited one.

He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

A zarkashī artisan was commissioned to make a cloth. When he had finished, its owners permitted him to wash it. However, the artisan’s slave woman mishandled it while polishing the goldwork, leaving cuts in the cloth. Must he compensate them for the cloth?

He answered:

Praise be to Allah. If the slave woman damaged the cloth, the claim for compensation attaches to her person. Her owner must either pay compensation for the damage or surrender her so that compensation can be recovered from her value.

Whether the damage was caused by her, her master, or someone else, the person responsible is not liable for what the owners spent on the cloth. Its value is assessed without these cuts and again after they have occurred, and those responsible must compensate for the reduction in value. If they mutually agree that the artisan should take the cloth and pay them its market value before it was cut, that is permissible. He is not obliged to give them a new cloth better than it.