and his followers have stated, and what he understands Ahmad’s principles to entail. Yet in questions with numerous branches and ramifications, the jurist deriving subsidiary rulings may sometimes overlook the relevant principles and explicit rulings in some of those branches.

Accordingly, if harm—such as severe cold, flooding, damaging winds, locusts, frost, mice, or the like—diminishes the intended, customary benefit to which the contract entitles the lessee, the same procedure applies as when assessing compensation for a defect in a purchased item. The land’s value without the affliction and its value with it are assessed; the diminution is calculated as a proportion of its full value, and the agreed rent is reduced by that proportion. For example, if its rental value without the affliction is one thousand, but with it is eight hundred, the affliction has reduced its value by one fifth, so one fifth of the agreed rent is deducted.

The same applies when a calamity affects fruit: one assesses how much the calamity has diminished its value—by a third, a quarter, or a fifth—and reduces the price payable by the corresponding proportion. Likewise, if the fruit deteriorates and becomes defective, one assesses how much that defect has diminished its value and reduces the price proportionately.

Some people may imagine that the loss caused by a calamity affecting crops on leased land is to be borne by the landowner, or that the landowner must remit part of the crop, by analogy with a calamity affecting fruit or crops that have been sold. This is mistaken. Through the contract, the purchaser of fruit or crops acquires ownership of the fruit or crops themselves. Thus, if they are destroyed before it becomes possible to