food that comes from his wealth, whether some of it is lawful and some unlawful. If the greater part of that wealth is illicit, then pious caution requires one to avoid it; yet it cannot be declared definitively forbidden unless a specific item is known to be unlawful in itself.

The wage earned by a cupper (ḥajjām) is not prohibited, for the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—once paid a cupper for his service, and he would never give anything unlawful. Nevertheless, the discrepancies among the prophetic reports on this point indicate that the trade carries a measure of baseness.