—namely, according to the going price on the very day he died or was declared bankrupt—and his assets are then distributed among the creditors in those same proportions. Out of each creditor’s share the judge purchases, on that creditor’s behalf, the identical merchandise he had supplied, or whatever portion of it is still to be found. No creditor whose claim consists of merchandise is to be handed cash, unless one of them had concluded a salam in which he advanced merchandise for merchandise; in that case it is permissible to give him his allotted share in gold or silver. If what is owed is food-grain or condiments, nothing other than his precise share may be handed to him, for otherwise it would entail selling food before taking possession. Instead, with the amount that falls to him the judge buys food of the same description.

If the estate of a deceased debtor is divided among his creditors and nothing remains, and another creditor then appears and proves his claim, he turns to those earlier creditors: each must surrender, in proportion to what he received from the deceased’s property, and the newcomer pursues every one of them for his exact fraction, whether that creditor is solvent or insolvent.

Should something have remained for the heirs and the claimant arrive thereafter, he begins with what had gone to the heirs and takes it. If that settles his claim, so be it; otherwise he returns to the creditors for the balance, and each is liable from what he obtained, in proportion to what is still outstanding.

If a man dies and, outwardly, no debt is known, so the heirs divide the estate among themselves, and then a creditor comes forward and establishes his debt, he approaches the heirs and finds that some have already lost or consumed what reached them while at least one of them is solvent. He may recover from the solvent heir everything that heir took from the deceased’s property; if that covers the debt, the matter is finished, and the heir who paid may seek reimbursement from the remaining heirs, whether poor or otherwise. If the portion that reached that heir does not cover the creditor’s claim, the creditor takes from him whatever he had received from the estate and then pursues the other heirs for the remainder of what is due.