—whether it be gold or silver. Rikāz, moreover, refers to the hoards of the Age of Ignorance that were buried in Arabian lands or in the open country that Muslims later acquired without fighting. Whoever discovers such a cache becomes its owner, but one-fifth (khums) must be taken out and disbursed to the prescribed beneficiaries. If the ruler is just, the finder hands that fifth over to him after keeping the remaining four-fifths for himself; if the ruler is unjust, the finder distributes the khums himself in the same channels assigned for the khums of war booty.

Coins struck in the Islamic era are treated instead as luqaṭa (lost property). Imām Mālik said: Any rikāz unearthed in land conquered by force (‘anwa) belongs to the conquerors, not to the finder. Whatever is found in treaty land (arḍ al-ṣulḥ) likewise belongs to its inhabitants, not to the finder or to anyone else—unless the finder is one of those inhabitants, in which case the find is his and not theirs—and everything discovered there is subject to khums. Ibn al-Qāsim added that, if the finder is himself a treaty-bound resident, the treasure is his; other Mālikī authorities held that it is the collective property of all the treaty people.

Rikāz located in enemy territory is shared by the entire army after one-fifth has been deducted, the finder counting as a member of that army and enjoying no exclusive claim. Some scholars of Medina and other Mālikīs draw no distinctions among these various lands. They maintain that, whether rikāz is discovered in ‘anwa land, treaty land, Arabian land, or enemy land, if it is unowned and unclaimed it belongs to the finder, and the khums is due in accordance with the unrestricted wording of the ḥadīth.

This is also the opinion of al-Layth, ʿAbd Allāh ibn Nāfiʿ, and al-Shāfiʿī, and it represents the view adopted by the majority of jurists. From the standpoint of analogy as well, just as the owner of land