deducting that proportion from the price of what he purchased. The same proportion of the fruit is accordingly written off, and no attention is paid to what remains—whether the remainder merely covers his capital or even exceeds it. If the part of the crop that has perished is less than one-third of the measured yield, the loss is borne by the purchaser; even were the value of what remains no more than a single dirham, the seller would incur no liability. This is the report and opinion of Ibn al-Qāsim.

Ashhab, however, maintained that the criterion is one-third of the value of the fruit, not one-third of its quantity. Thus, when the blight reaches one-third of the value, one-third of the price is remitted, without regard to a corresponding fraction of the fruit itself.

No remission is granted for blight in fruit sold at the moment of picking, nor in grain sold at harvest after it has dried and no longer depends on water; any loss that occurs in such cases—whether slight or severe—rests with the buyer. The same ruling applies to every sale concluded for produce to be cut immediately: no allowance for blight is made in either fruit or grain.

Likewise, there is no remission for the fruit of a garden when the land itself is sold and the buyer stipulates its fruit, whether this takes place before the first signs of ripeness or after. As for greens, any blight that strikes them—little or much, visible or hidden—is borne by the seller, and nothing is charged to the buyer unless the calamity is trifling and insignificant, in which case it is his burden. This is the opinion most widely transmitted from Mālik.

Yet ʿAlī ibn Ziyād and others narrate from Mālik that blight in greens is to be treated like blight in fruit: whatever amounts to one-third or more is remitted for the purchaser, just as with fruit. Another report from Mālik states that nothing at all is remitted for blight in greens, whether the amount be small or large.

Vegetable beds—such as melon patches—are treated like fruit orchards with respect to blight, the threshold of one-third or more being observed, and every fruit irrigated by a well or a spring