his trade day and night, hammering as he earns his living. May the neighbour stop him because the noise annoys him? Malik replied, “I see no basis for that; he may not be prevented from seeking his livelihood through his craft—so long as he does not rob the neighbour of sleep or place a constant din between him and his rest. Likewise, if he digs a sewer channel or privy pit near his own wall, he is not restrained, even though it deprives the neighbour of sun and air. He may not, however, pierce that wall with an opening that allows him to look into his neighbour’s property.
In a cul-de-sac, no one may open a new door beyond those to which he already holds an established right, nor may he build there a projecting bench (ʿaskar, called among us a tabūt or janāḥ) or a lean-to roof. Should some residents agree to such an addition while others refuse, the consent is valid only if those who agree live at the far end of the alley and must pass over the very spot where the structure is to be built on their way to their houses.
If, on the other hand, the alley is a through street used by the public, no resident may be prevented from opening any door he wishes, whether it faces his neighbour’s doorway or not.
Whoever sets up a threshing-floor (andar) in a place where it causes manifest harm to his neighbour’s house or orchard is restrained. Yet if bundles of harvested grain and their husks on the neighbour’s own land block the wind from reaching that threshing-floor, he is not ordered to remove them.
Tanners are barred from continuing their tanning when the foul smell harms the neighbours and they complain. If a tanner already possessed a long-standing right to tan a certain amount but then increases it in a way that harms his neighbour, he is stopped from the excess.
The same rule applies to smoke from bath-house furnaces and bakeries: whenever it clearly harms the surrounding dwellers, the one who produced it is restrained—unless he can vent the smoke high enough that it no longer harms them, in which case he may continue.
As for blacksmiths, cuppers, honey-makers, sword-smiths, and similar trades, Ibn Ḥabīb reported—both from himself and his teachers—that they did not regard the annoyance they cause as grounds for legal action, nor did they compel such craftsmen to desist. Muṭarrif transmitted the same view from Malik in the Thamāniyya of Abū Zayd, where Malik was asked about a blacksmith working