The stronger view in this case is that the two share. For if the intention is that each child becomes entitled after his father’s death—whether his paternal uncle is alive or dead—then such wording makes entitlement conditional upon the father’s lack of entitlement. This is comparable to what the jurists say regarding the order of agnatic heirs: the son, then his son, then the father, then his father, then the paternal uncle, then the paternal uncle’s sons, and so forth.

The only condition for the second rank is that the first should have no entitlement. Whenever members of the second rank exist and those of the first have no entitlement, the second becomes entitled, whether or not the first had previously been entitled. Entitlement at the second rank does not require prior entitlement at the first. This is because the second generation receives its entitlement to the endowment from the founder, not from that second generation itself. It is not like property inherited by a son and then passed on to his son. Rather, it resembles the bond of manumission, by virtue of which one inherits: if the emancipator’s son dies during the emancipator’s lifetime, his son’s son inherits the entitlement arising from that bond.

Those who err in cases of this kind do so because they suppose that the second generation receives its entitlement from the preceding one, so that if the first was not entitled to anything, neither is the second. They therefore suppose that if a father dies before becoming entitled, his son has no entitlement. This is not so; rather, they receive their entitlement from the founder.

This holds even if the first generation is excluded by an impediment. For example, the founder may stipulate that the beneficiaries must be poor, scholars, upright people, or meet some other condition. If the father does not meet the stipulated condition but his son does, the son becomes entitled even though his father did not. Likewise, if he dies