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Matters entrusted to the ruler are also entrusted to his deputies. In matters assigned to judges, the order of a judge acting as the ruler’s deputy has the same force as the ruler’s own order. Examples include arranging marriages for the unmarried, overseeing endowments and administering them according to their founders’ stipulations, and maintaining mosques and their endowments, wherever the ruler is permitted to undertake such matters. Whatever the ruler may lawfully administer, his deputy may likewise administer.

If a matter is open to juristic judgment and disagreement concerning it is widespread, no one may censure the ruler or his deputy, whether a judge or another official, or overturn what the ruler and his deputies have done in that matter.

This applies when the building is in the road, even if it adjoins the road, according to most scholars: Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Ahmad. The same applies to a house’s forecourt. But does the forecourt belong to the house’s owner, or is its use one of the rights attached to the house?

There are two views within Ahmad’s school. The first is that it belongs to the house’s owner; this is also the position of Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī. Mālik even spoke of forecourts situated in the road that their occupants rent out, saying: “If