his right foot is cut, followed by the left. Should the executioner make a mistake and sever the thief’s left hand, nothing further is required of the thief, and the executioner bears no liability. Whoever cuts off the hand of a thief in a case where amputation is legally due subjects the thief to no additional penalty, and no amputation is inflicted on the cutter; yet anyone who usurps the ruler’s prerogative is disciplined.
If a person deserves both the amputation of a hand for theft and retribution for homicide, the death penalty, according to Mālik, overrides all the other ḥudūd, with the exception of the penalty for false accusation, as explained earlier in the chapter on slander.
When the thief’s hand has been cut and the stolen goods are still with him, they are returned to their owner, and no compensation is taken from a thief who has already been amputated. If he has consumed or destroyed what he stole and is destitute, nothing is exacted from him; but if he is solvent at both points in time—the moment of the theft and the moment of the amputation—he must repay the value. If he is insolvent at either point, nothing is taken from him so long as he has paid nothing up to then.
Anyone whose theft does not lead to amputation—because he was caught before leaving the ḥirz (secure enclosure), or he is a minor, or he stole from a place that is not a ḥirz, or the item is one for which no cutting is prescribed—must always make restitution when he is able. In hardship the amount is entered against him as a debt until he becomes solvent, and if the stolen article itself is recovered it is reclaimed in every case.
If the stolen property is found with someone who bought it from the thief, the owner takes it back and the purchaser claims its value from the thief, whether the thief is wealthy or poor, exactly as with any other consumed goods. Some scholars of Madinah maintain that the thief—whether his hand has been cut or not—is pursued for everything he has consumed of the stolen property, in both hardship and ease, because the scholars agree that if his hand is cut and the item is found intact, the owner takes it back. The first opinion, however, is the view of Mālik.
According to Mālik, when a slave’s hand is cut for theft and the stolen article is not found with him, he is not pursued for its value, neither through his person nor through any personal liability. A child, in contrast, is always required to pay from his own property, whether he is poor or rich. If a slave admits that the property in his possession is stolen, while his master denies this, the slave’s hand is cut and the property belongs to the master rather than to the person the slave acknowledged; and everything else he admits to