Partners who are jointly owed sums by several debtors may not have each partner assign his own portion to one debtor in particular and pursue him alone. Instead, with every debtor the amount owed must be divided among them in proportion to their respective shares.

If two men are owed a debt in a distant town and one invites his associate to travel with him to collect it, but the latter refuses and says, “Go if you wish and take your share,” and the first partner goes and collects it, the one who stayed behind has no right to any part of what was collected. The same ruling applies when one partner, out of self-interest, collects his own share while the other grants the debtor a respite for the balance; if the debtor then becomes insolvent, the partner who granted the respite has no claim to what his associate already gathered.

All of this concerns partners who have dissolved their partnership or separated, or two individuals who hold joint debts recorded in a single deed and the like. As for partners in a mufāwaḍa (general mutual-agency) partnership, their ruling is that which has already been set forth in the Book of Partnership.

Anyone who produces evidence for ownership of a slave that has died while in another man’s possession has no claim against that man—unless the testimony states that the latter had seized the slave wrongfully.