his children, then for his children’s children,” were intended to mean that individuals succeed individuals, not that one group as a whole succeeds another, as his explanation makes clear—even though, according to one of the two views, the latter is what the wording signifies when unqualified.

Where the beneficiaries of rights are ranked in order, whether by Islamic law or by stipulation, those rights pass to the second rank only when the first is absent or lacks entitlement, because the first rank has priority. Thus the jurists say concerning agnatic relatives in inheritance or marriage: “The son, then his son, then the father, then his father.”

Thus, the son’s son’s entitlement is conditional upon his father’s absence, on account of his lack of entitlement—owing to an impediment affecting him, such as disbelief or the like. It is not required that his father should have been entitled to something that had not passed to him. Likewise with regard to the mother: marriage, custody, and authority over washing the deceased and offering the funeral prayer over him.

Those who imagine that the first rank must have acquired entitlement do so only because they imagine that the endowment passes from the first rank to the second, and that the second receives it from the first, as with inheritance. That is not so. Rather, the second receives the endowment from its founder, just as the first did, and just as relatives receive their rights from the Lawgiver. Entitlement, however, is determined by the order stipulated by the Lawgiver or the founder.