—an article as an open-ended loan, Mālik maintains that he may not take it back from the borrower until the latter has derived the customary benefit that people ordinarily obtain from such loans.

If a man lends a plot of his land so that the borrower may build on it and live there for a fixed period, the owner is not allowed to evict him before that term expires—exactly as, in a lease, the lessor cannot annul the contract before its appointed time. And even when no period was stipulated for the loan of the land, the owner may not reclaim it until the borrower has benefited from it to the extent generally recognised for that type of gratuitous loan. Should he remove him earlier, he must reimburse him in full for whatever he spent on the construction. Some have said that he may instead give him the dismantled materials or pay him their value while the structure is still standing; others hold that he must pay their value once dismantled. The first view is the established position of the school and the one on which practice rests.

After the borrower has occupied the building for the accepted, customary length of time, the landowner may evict him, but must then hand over either the dismantled materials or their value after dismantling—the choice belongs to the landowner. This is unanimously reported from Mālik and is the same ruling that applies when the eviction occurs at the end of a specified term. The same rule holds if the borrower wishes to leave before his term is complete.

If someone lends his land on condition that the borrower erect on it a specific, well-defined building, and that when the term ends the land together with whatever stands on it reverts to its owner, this is permissible; it falls under the heading of lease, not of gratuitous loan or charitable favour. No such arrangement is allowed with planting, however, for it involves uncertainty: the trees may or may not come to fruition.

Whoever borrows something—an animal or anything else—for a set period may, during that same period, lease it to another person, and there is likewise no objection to his lending him land for the remainder of the term.

All praise belongs to Allah, Lord of the Worlds.