Chapter: A Comprehensive Digest of the Rulings Governing Alterations Made by a Usurper
If a person seizes silver jewellery and then consumes it, the owner may recover its value reckoned in gold—or in any other commodity, with the sole exception of silver. Likewise, when the jewellery is gold, the owner may demand its value assessed in silver or in any merchandise save gold itself. Should the usurper be insolvent on the day judgment is passed for that value, the sum is entered against him as a debt. The rule requiring immediate hand-to-hand exchange in ṣarf (currency exchange) has no place here; note that, even long after the act of usurpation, the owner is accepting the value of gold in silver and the value of silver in gold.
If the usurper merely damages the jewellery—breaking or denting it without ruining it entirely—he is liable for whatever loss in value his action caused, payable in gold, silver, or any kind of property, whether for prompt payment or on deferred terms. This holds whether the item is of gold or of silver.
When the property usurped consists of dinars or dirhams and the usurper effaces their stamps, the owner may not retain those very coins and also claim compensation for their diminished value; he is entitled only to dinars equal to his dinars or dirhams equal to his dirhams. Similarly, if he seizes dinars or dirhams and mixes them with others of the same kind, the owner does not become a co-owner of the mixture. Instead, the usurper must bring him the same number of sound dinars or dirhams of identical weight.
Whoever takes a beam, builds upon it, props a structure with it, builds around it, or snatches a scrap of cloth and patches his garment with it—its owner has the right to reclaim it, even if the removal forces the usurper to demolish his building or tear his garment, unless the owner prefers to accept its value on the day of the usurpation. The same ruling applies if that wood or cloth is found in the possession of someone who purchased it from the usurper, contrary to the earlier ruling. Some have said that this concerns a beam inserted into a building whose removal would not harm the builder by bringing down the structure, whereas if removing