In the name of Allah, the Most Merciful, the Compassionate.

Book of Deposits (Wadīʿah)

No one who is entrusted with a deposit is held liable for it unless he abuses it or negligently fails to protect what he was obliged to safeguard. If he claims to have returned it to its owner, he is believed upon taking an oath—unless the owner had originally delivered it in the presence of witnesses, in which case Mālik rules that he is not to be believed without producing witnesses of his own. If he alleges that the deposit was destroyed, he is accepted in every situation, whether or not witnesses attended the hand-over, unless he is suspected of wrongdoing; then he must swear an oath.

Whoever is given a deposit while residing in town may, without objection, place it with someone else; but if he subsequently travels and the item is lost, he is liable. The same ruling applies when he sets out to relocate from one town to another: if he takes the deposit with him and it is lost, he must make good the loss. If a man receives a deposit while on a journey and then entrusts it to another, he is liable for it should it perish.

When money is dispatched with a person from one town to another and circumstances oblige him to stay en route, it is permissible for him to send it onward with another courier, and he incurs no liability—even if he were in