the condition applying to all generations, customary usage confirms that meaning. Even if we suppose that the linguistic meaning restricts it to the last generation, customary usage would have altered that established meaning.

The statements of endowment founders, those taking oaths, testators and others in similar positions are interpreted according to their established customary meanings, rather than their linguistic meanings. Moreover, we maintain the following:

This is how such wording is understood in customary usage, and the presumption is that customary usage preserves the linguistic meaning rather than changes it. This therefore serves as evidence that this is also the wording’s linguistic meaning, since the presumption is that no shift in meaning has occurred. Anyone who disputes that people, both learned and ordinary, understand this wording, when unqualified, as making the condition apply to all generations is plainly denying the obvious. If he concedes this but disputes that the words of someone making a legal disposition should be interpreted according to the meaning people understand, he is plainly departing from the principles of the Sharia. These, then, are two certain premises; knowing them necessarily entails that the condition applies to all generations.

The third ground:

If the wording is interpreted as making the condition apply only to the final clause, then, according to the opposing view, its effect would be as follows: without this condition, the descendants would jointly share in the entire endowment that had passed to them from the generation above them, as well as whatever had passed to them from those among them who had died, whether leaving children or not.

Thus, if he says:

“Whoever among them dies without leaving children, his share shall go to those of his own generation,”

this means that those of the deceased’s own generation alone receive his share if he leaves no children, to the exclusion of those above and below them. This was not implied by the wording. If he does leave children, all the beneficiaries of the endowment share in the deceased’s portion, his children and others alike. If, however, the wording is interpreted