so whoever wishes to explore it further should refer to it.
I say: If this is so, then when the buyer leaves with what he has purchased, he either pays the price immediately or defers payment. In the first case, the sale is valid; in the second, he leaves owing the deferred price—the very point at issue. Where, then, is the alleged uncertainty? This is especially so when payment is made in installments: the first installment is paid in cash, and the remainder in installments according to the agreement. Thus, the supposed cause of uncertainty is invalid both in practice and in theory.
- The evidence for the third view is the hadith under discussion and the hadith of Ibn Masʿūd, for they agree that “two sales in one sale are ribā.” Thus, ribā is the legal cause, and the prohibition is contingent upon the presence or absence of that cause. If he takes the higher of the two prices, it is ribā; but if he takes the lower of them, it is permissible—as has preceded from the scholars who explicitly stated that he may take the lower of the two prices with the longer of the two payment terms. In that case, he has not sold two sales in one sale. Do you not see that if he sells an item at its current price and gives the buyer the choice of paying the price in cash or on credit, it is evidently not said of him that he has sold two sales in one sale? This is what the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, explicitly stated in his previously cited words: “He is entitled to the lower of the two prices, or else it is ribā.” He thus declared the sale valid when its cause was absent, and invalidated the increase because it is ribā. This was the view of Ṭāwūs, al-Thawrī, and al-Awzāʿī—may Allah Most High have mercy on them—as mentioned earlier.
From this, you may recognize the fallacy of al-Khaṭṭābī’s statement in Maʿālim al-Sunan (5/97): “I know of no jurist who adopted the apparent meaning of this hadith and declared the sale valid at the lower of the two prices, apart from something reported from al-Awzāʿī. It is an unsound doctrine, because of the uncertainty and ignorance entailed by this contractual arrangement.”
I say: By “ignorance,” he means ignorance of the price, as has preceded from him. Yet you have learned from the foregoing that his own view is the unsound one, because he based it on a legal cause that has no basis in the Sacred Law, whereas the view of al-Awzāʿī rests upon the text of the Lawgiver, as has preceded. For this reason, al-Shawkānī countered him in Nayl al-Awṭār (5/129), saying: “It is clear that what al-Awzāʿī said is the apparent meaning of the hadith, because ruling that he is entitled to the lower of the two prices entails