their funds that it was received, and it was not reserved for the collector who received it. Likewise, whatever is received on account of someone’s assets must be accounted for as part of those assets, for it is incidental to them. Just as whatever is given on their account constitutes a gain and an increase belonging to them, rather than to the recipient, so whatever is taken on their account constitutes a charge and a reduction borne by those assets, rather than personally by the one who paid it.

Likewise, anyone who saves another person’s property from loss by making a payment on his behalf is entitled to reimbursement from him. This includes someone who saves property from brigands, an oppressive army, or an oppressive official, and can only secure its release by making such a payment. He is entitled to recover that payment, having done the owner a kindness—even if he was neither entrusted with the property nor compelled to make the payment on the owner’s behalf. He has nevertheless done him a kindness, and is there any reward for good other than good?

If he saves ten thousand dirhams by paying one thousand on the owner’s behalf, he has acted benevolently. When the owner gives him the thousand, he has merely repaid his loan; his work and effort in saving the property remain an act of kindness for which he has not been recompensed. This is the more correct of the two scholarly opinions. Whoever treats him in such a case as having made a gratuitous donation and awards him nothing has uttered something reprehensible and false, and has repaid kindness with mistreatment.

Whoever says, “This is the revealed law with which Allah sent His Messenger,” has spoken untruthfully about Allah. Rather, it is the opinion of some scholars, while others have disagreed with them. Attributing such opinions to the revealed law causes many people to think ill of it, turn away from it, and disparage its adherents. For some scholars have expressed a view based on their own judgment