people unjustly—for example, by taking from thieves and highway robbers some of the wealth they steal from people; by setting out to wrong certain people, who then pay him to desist; by exempting certain people from the demands imposed on their peers so that they will pay him a bribe; by ruling unjustly, or ruling justly only in return for a bribe; by seizing people’s property through fabricated accusations against them; or by denying justice to those killed in return for bribes from their killers—then these funds and others like them rightfully belong to their owners.

This is like a thief who steals property and mixes it together: doing so does not make it unlawful for its owners. Rather, they divide the property among themselves in proportion to their respective claims. Even if a particular owner’s property cannot be identified because the thief sold it or the like, what was received in exchange takes its place.

Concerning someone who earns profits by trading or otherwise using these funds, one view holds that the profits belong to the owners of the funds. Another holds that they belong to him if he incurred personal liability for the purchase. Another holds that both he and the owners should give the profits in charity because they are ill-gotten gains. Yet another holds that the profits should be divided between him and the owners of the funds, as in a profit-sharing partnership. This is what ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb did concerning the money that Abū Mūsā al-Ashʿarī lent to ʿUmar’s two sons, to the exclusion of the rest of the army. This is the most equitable of these views.

Accordingly, the owners of the funds divide whatever they find in proportion to their respective claims, since it is either their actual property or payment of the debts established as his personal liability. Indeed, the correct view is that their rights attach to both: his personal liability and the funds themselves.

But if he does not know how much he seized unlawfully or the identities of all the creditors, then whoever among them takes from these