a person is alive, he may spend his wealth in pursuit of permissible aims, since he benefits from doing so. After death, however, he no longer benefits from the deeds of the living except through righteous deeds that he instructed others to perform, helped bring about, or whose reward is gifted to him, and the like. As for deeds that do not constitute obedience to Allah and His Messenger, the deceased does not benefit from them at all. Thus, if a testator or the founder of an endowment stipulates an act or a manner of performing it for which there is no reward, striving to fulfil that stipulation means striving for something that benefits him neither in this world nor in the Hereafter. Such a thing is impermissible, whereas his sole purpose in establishing the endowment is to draw closer to Allah. And Allah knows best.

He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

A man endowed a ribāt (residential lodge), housed a group of people devoted to the Quran there, and allocated sufficient daily provision for them. He imposed conditions upon them that are not prescribed in the Sharia. Among these was that they gather at two specified times during the day to recite a specified portion of the Quran in the premises he had endowed, and nowhere else, assembled together rather than separately. He also stipulated that they gift him the reward of their recitation, and that anyone who did not fulfil his stipulations in the endowed premises would not receive the provision allotted to him.

Are all these conditions binding upon anyone who receives the stipend, or only some of them, or do none of them have any legal effect? If recitation is binding, must they fulfil every condition he stipulated concerning it? Or may they recite whatever they can manage without gifting any reward?