day and night, beating with his hammers to earn his living. “May his neighbour stop him because of the disturbance?” Malik answered, “I see no basis for that; he may not be prevented from seeking his livelihood through his trade—provided he does not deprive the neighbour of sleep or raise an unremitting din between him and his rest.

If he digs a sewer channel or a latrine pit close to his wall, he is likewise not restrained so long as he screens and covers it. The same ruling applies should he add an upper chamber or a lean-to roof that causes no harm to those who pass beneath it. Yet if the facing neighbour complains that the structure narrows the airspace of the alley, that airspace must be divided equally between them; and if the addition shakes the wall and loosens it, thereby harming the neighbour, he is forbidden to build it against his neighbour’s property.

Muṭarrif and Aṣbagh differed over rooftop dovecotes (ḥamām al-abriḥa) and the sparrows attracted to them, and over beehives, chickens, and geese that damage crops and trees and annoy the neighbours. Muṭarrif said, “I hold that their owners should be barred from keeping them, for they cannot be kept under constant control; they are like a vicious beast, or a rampaging cow or she-camel from whose harm one cannot protect himself.” Malik responded, “If that is truly the case, then the owner should indeed be prevented from confining them and ordered to sell them.” Muṭarrif added, “These pigeons and chickens are not like ordinary livestock, for livestock can be herded and people can protect themselves from its harm.”

Aṣbagh, however, held that bees, pigeons, chickens, and geese are comparable to livestock: their owner is not forbidden to keep them, and the villagers are responsible for safeguarding their own crops and trees. “Such,” he said, “has always been the practice.”