and if he oversteps or squanders the deposit, he is liable. Among the acts counted as overstepping are: being entrusted with a mount and then riding it, with a female slave and then marrying her off, or with a male slave and then dispatching him on a journey. Should any of those deposits be lost or diminished because of what he did, he must answer for the whole loss or shortfall that ensues.

Whatever the trustee spends on the deposit is chargeable to its owner—whether or not the owner had expressly authorized it—so long as the expenditure was genuinely needed. No one is permitted to act wrongfully toward property left in his custody and thereby destroy it unless he possesses secure assets against which the owner may recover should the deposit perish through his wrongdoing; yet refraining from such conduct is better. If he borrows from the deposit, he ought to call witnesses over that act.

If he trades with an entrusted asset and turns a profit, he remains liable for the capital until he restores it to its place of safekeeping, while the profit belongs to him, not to the owner of the capital. Should he use the money to buy a female slave, have intercourse with her, and she becomes pregnant, she becomes his umm walad (mother of his child); he must repay the money to its rightful owner, and that owner has no claim upon the slave. This is Mālik’s ruling, for by overstepping he incurred liability for the capital, and once he has repaid what was due, the slave lawfully belongs to him.

If someone entrusts a deposit to a slave and the slave destroys it, the liability attaches to the slave alone; nothing of it is required from the master. This is so whether the slave received the property with his master’s permission or without it, except that if he took it without permission the master may rescind the transaction on the slave’s behalf, and if he does, no further claim lies against him according to Mālik. If the slave accepted the deposit with his master’s permission, the master may not rescind; the liability remains with the slave, and he will be pursued for it once he is emancipated.

Whoever holds a deposit whose owner has disappeared and from whom no news is heard must retain it for as long as it is still reasonable to hope for the owner’s return. If he loses hope of the owner’s survival, he hands it over to the owner’s heirs; if there are no heirs, he donates it in charity on the owner’s behalf.