or he may return the entire lot and recover the full purchase price.

If someone buys a defective item and the defect disappears while it is still in his possession—before he lodges any claim—his right of action and his option both lapse, and he may not return the item, unless the defect is one that is likely to recur or whose harm is permanent.

Whoever purchases a slave who is married, being unaware of it, and then learns of the marriage and wishes to return the slave, but the slave divorces his wife, has no right to return him, although another opinion allows the return. Mālik’s settled view, however, is that when a buyer discovers that a female slave has a husband, and the husband divorces her before she is returned, that divorce does not cancel the buyer’s option to return her or to keep her on account of the defect of her being married.

The defects that oblige a seller to take back a slave are: junūn (insanity); judhām (leprosy); baras (vitiligo); ʿusr (hernia); khuṣy (castration); ratq (imperforate vagina); ifḍāʾ (a traumatic fistula); zaʿtar; bayāḍ al-shaʿr (premature whitening of the hair); ʿamā (blindness); ʿawar (being one-eyed); ṣamm (deafness); bukhr (offensive breath); and any defect that lowers the price and makes people reluctant to buy. For anyone who seeks to do so, returning the slave on account of such a defect is obligatory.

The same principle applies to all other goods, whatever their kind: any defect that diminishes the price establishes the right to rescind. A defect that does not reduce the price does not confer that right—except in the cases of castration and blindness.