—and says, “Brother, let me sell this for you.” Such an arrangement is not permissible, for the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) said, “Leave the people; let Allah provide for each of them through the other.” Leave the Bedouin to sell for himself; he may wish to sell cheaply because he wants to hurry back to his family. Moreover, when the Bedouin sells directly, the townsman usually pays him cash on the spot and does not delay payment, knowing that the man is a desert-dweller who will soon depart. Thus the seller—the Bedouin—benefits by receiving immediate payment, and the buyer benefits because the Bedouin generally sells at a low price, being in a hurry and unwilling to wait for a better offer. For this reason the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade an urban resident to sell on behalf of a Bedouin.

The jurists—may Allah have mercy on them—deduced from the underlying reason that if the Bedouin himself comes to the townsman and says, “O so-and-so, sell this merchandise for me,” there is no harm in doing so. The Bedouin now knows that if the townsman handles the sale the price will usually be higher, and he does not mind staying a day or two to collect the proceeds. Nevertheless, the apparent wording of the ḥadīth is general: the townsman is not to sell for the Bedouin. Therefore, if the Bedouin says to him, “Take my goods and sell them,” he should reply, “No—sell them yourself.”

The scholars also inferred from the statement “Leave the people; let Allah provide for each of them through the other” that if the price is fixed—whether the townsman or the Bedouin sells—then it is permissible for the townsman to sell on his behalf, because the price will not change. An example would be a situation in which the state sets a fixed price for that commodity, allowing no increase or decrease; in such a case there is no difference whether it is sold by the urban resident or the Bedouin—no advantage accrues to the former.