The same applies to an endowment. If someone establishes an endowment for his children, generation after generation along their agnatic line, stipulating that they must be upright, poor, or meet some other condition, and one or all of the first generation fail to meet the condition of entitlement, the right passes, when the first beneficiary is not entitled, to the second generation, provided they qualify.

The underlying reason is that the second generation receives its entitlement to the endowment from the founder, not from the first generation. Their receiving it, however, is conditional upon the absence of the first generation. Similarly, more distant agnatic relatives receive their inheritance from the deceased, not from the nearer agnatic relative, although their entitlement is conditional upon the absence of the nearer relative. Likewise, according to the well-known position among the imams, inheritance through patronage goes to the deceased’s nearest agnatic relative at the time of the freedman’s death, for it is inherited just as property is inherited.

Some people misunderstand such matters because they suppose that the child receives this right as an inheritance from his father, or as something comparable to an inheritance. They therefore imagine that its passing to the second generation is conditional upon the first generation having been entitled to it, as some jurists have supposed. Such a person says: “If the father left nothing, the son inherits nothing from him.”

This is mistaken. The son does not, under any circumstances, receive what the father receives, nor does he receive anything from the father. Had the father been alive, he would have received the income throughout his lifetime. What then passes to his son is the income arising after the father’s death, not the income to which the father was entitled.

The endowed property itself, however, remains unchanged. The later beneficiary’s right to it during his time is analogous to the earlier beneficiary’s right during his time; it has not passed to them by inheritance.