building is all the more permissible. Building there is like building in recesses that lie off the main roadway, adjoining a house or mosque while also opening onto the road, and which road users do not need—unless one supposes an unusually large forecourt resembling a through-passage connected to a public thoroughfare. In all these cases, they have a greater right than others. If they wished to build there and install a gate, most scholars would permit this for the reasons already given. According to Abū Hanīfah, however, they may not do so, since this would extinguish others’ right to enter when necessary.

Most scholars say:

Others’ right there extends only to being permitted to use it when its occupants have not restricted access. Likewise, privately owned open land may be used in ways that do not harm its owners, such as praying there, resting there at midday, or stopping there as a traveller. Such uses are permissible both there and in the forecourts of houses without the owner’s permission, according to the overwhelming majority of scholars.

Scholars of al-Shāfi‘ī’s school mention two opinions concerning the use of a forecourt without the owner’s permission. Scholars of Ahmad’s school also mention a view prohibiting prayer on privately owned open land. This, however, is difficult to reconcile with Ahmad’s explicit statements and principles, for he permits eating fruit in such circumstances. How much more, then, should uses that cause the owner no harm be permissible! Moreover, according to Ahmad’s explicit ruling, it is permissible to graze livestock on herbage growing on unlawfully seized land; one may therefore enter it without its owner’s permission for the sake of the herbage, although some scholars of his school prohibited this.