and for muwāḍaʿa, ʿuhda, and the like: handing over the price in cash when no such term has been stipulated is permissible and carries no blame, whereas making immediate payment a binding condition is unlawful in every one of these transactions and in anything comparable to them.

Other invalid or disputed stipulations include:

• Requiring that the seller be absolved of all liability for any pregnancy found in a premium slave.

• The buyer’s paying the seller in cash for an item even though the seller himself had not received cash for it.

• Purchasing something that has not been described, with no recourse to the right of inspection (khiyār al-ruʾya).

• Buying a commodity “at the judge’s appraisal,” “at someone else’s appraisal,” “for whatever price experts place on it,” or “for whatever it will fetch in the market.”

• According to some of Mālik’s companions, two people pooling their respective goods—two garments, for example—and selling them in a single transaction; other Mālikīs permit this.

• The sale of a female—whether animal or slave—on the understanding that she is pregnant: some declare the sale invalid; others deem it valid but rule that, if she is found not to be pregnant, she may be returned. The exception is a full-grown slave-girl: she is neither returned nor compensated for, because pregnancy lowers her value and is treated as a defect from which the seller is already absolved. Some jurists say that if the pregnancy is plainly visible, there is no objection to selling her on the express condition that she is pregnant; stated or unstated, it is all the same in that case.

• Purchasing a debt owed by someone who is deceased or by an absentee.

• Buying a piece of cloth of which part has already been woven—or of which some portion still remains to be woven—on the understanding that it will be completed.

• Selling an item on condition that, whenever the buyer brings back the original price, the seller will cancel the sale, or on condition that, whenever the buyer sells it, the original seller may repurchase it for that same price.

• They also disagreed about a sale concluded by a person in a life-threatening illness: some hold it invalid under all circumstances, while others uphold it but treat any favorable pricing as a bequest falling within one-third of the estate; both opinions are transmitted from Mālik. If the purchaser is an heir, they unanimously agree that the sale is invalid.

• Likewise, they differed concerning the sale of standing, dry crops on the condition that the seller