Chapter: The Advance Purchase (salam) and the Conditions for Its Validity

1. A salam contract may not be concluded for any commodity unless it is considered secure—that is, it does not disappear from people’s hands at the time it falls due.
2. There is no objection to contracting salam for something of which the seller presently has no stock.
3. One may also contract salam for an item that is normally unavailable for many times the period of the contract, provided its availability at the due date is reasonably assured.

Muhammad ibn Muʿāwiyah al-Ḥaḍramī reported from Mālik that when Mālik was asked about a man who advances payment for sheep and young goats, he replied, “If they can be procured each time, there is no harm in it; otherwise, it is not good.”

4. No salam may be made for anything sold by measure or by weight unless the volume or weight is precisely specified, the term is precisely specified, and the commodity’s description is precise and unambiguous so that no uncertainty arises should the parties dispute.
5. The place of delivery must be defined just as the term is defined.
6. The purchase price (raʾs al-māl) must be paid immediately, and the two parties are not to separate until the seller has received it.
7. If the payment is delayed by one, two, or three days—whether that delay was stipulated or occurred without stipulation—the salam remains valid according to Mālik.
8. Should the delay extend a little beyond that, without any stipulation, it is still permissible according to Mālik.
9. If the delay is substantial and the capital paid is ready money, the contract is impermissible, whether the delay was stipulated or not.
10. If the capital consists of merchandise, the contract is valid so long as no delay was stipulated, even if in practice the payment is postponed until the due date of the salam commodity.

All of the foregoing represents the distilled position of Mālik according to most of his companions. The view I myself adopt is that only immediate payment of cash is lawful; otherwise, the transaction becomes kalāʾ bi-kalāʾ (one deferred item for another deferred item), and that is also the opinion of the majority of jurists.

Mālik’s ruling is consistent that, were the two parties to rescind a salam on the basis of deferring repayment by a day or two, it would not be permissible; initiating the transaction with such a deferment, by the same reasoning, is even more clearly impermissible.