thus qualified—if its qualifying condition is absent, does it fail altogether, or does it take effect without that qualification? There is disagreement on this.

Once it is clear that his statement, “on condition that whoever among them dies,” constitutes a legally operative condition and a substantive qualification of the aforementioned endowment, and that it must be taken into account and acted upon, then the following is evident: taking this qualification into account makes the transfer of the deceased’s share to those of his generation conditional upon his leaving no child, and the founder did not assign the deceased’s share to them in this circumstance. It is then evident that the deceased’s share may not be allocated to them in the opposite circumstance, namely, when he leaves a child. This is precisely the point to be established.

It is also clear that this is agreed upon by the jurists—indeed, by rational people, whether they accept or reject arguments from implication. Allocating an endowment to anyone other than those to whom its founder assigned it is forbidden, and he did not assign it to them. This prohibition, based on the absence of grounds for entitlement, is unanimously accepted. Another ground is that he has prohibited its allocation to them; this prohibition, based on the existence of a preventive factor, is disputed.

The wording thus amounts to:

“I establish this endowment for my children, then for their children, on condition that the share of any deceased beneficiary passes to those of his generation if he dies leaving no child.”

No jurist disputes the restrictive effect of all the stated qualifications in this area. The only person who errs here is one who has not given due weight to the linguistic meanings of words, has not distinguished between the different categories of textually grounded principles of jurisprudence, and has not acquired experience in the rulings of Islamic law attached to the statements of legally accountable persons