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B18 · باب أقسام الأحكام وأسبابها وعللها وشروطها وعلاماتها · Kinds of rulings (God's rights, people's rights, mixed; original and substitute); cause, effective cause, condition and sign, and their divisions (v2/289–332)

1. B18.01 · أقسام الحقوق · Rulings are of four kinds: purely God's, purely people's, mixed with God's right dominant, mixed with people's right dominant; God's pure rights have eight types (v2/289–297)
2. B18.02 · الأصل والخلف · Every right has an original and a substitute; the substitute is owed by the same cause, only if the cause first met its object, and the ruling passes to it on inability to perform the original (v2/297–300)
3. B18.03 · تعريف السبب والعلة والشرط والعلامة · Cause (sabab) is a path to the ruling; effective cause (ʿilla) changes the state by occurring in it; condition is what the ruling exists at, not by; a sign only makes it known (v2/301–304)
4. B18.04 · تقسيم السبب · Four kinds of cause (sabab): figurative, pure, with a likeness to an effective cause (ʿilla), and in the meaning of an ʿilla (v2/304–312)
5. B18.05 · تقسيم العلة · Six kinds of effective cause (ʿilla), by name, meaning and effect (ḥukm) (v2/312–320)
6. B18.06 · تقسيم الشرط والعلامة · Six kinds of condition (pure; in the ruling of an ʿilla; resembling an ʿilla; in the meaning of a sabab; in name only; a sign) and four kinds of sign (v2/320–332)

B18.01 · أقسام الحقوق · Rulings are of four kinds: purely God's, purely people's, mixed with God's right dominant, mixed with people's right dominant; God's pure rights have eight types (v2/289–297)

• Position: «هَذِه الْأَحْكَام أَرْبَعَة حُقُوق الله خَالِصا وَحُقُوق الْعباد خَالِصا أَيْضا وَمَا يشْتَمل على الْحَقَّيْنِ وَحقّ الله فِيهِ أغلب وَمَا يشْتَمل عَلَيْهِمَا وَحقّ الْعباد فِيهِ أغلب» (v2/289). God's pure rights: pure worship; pure penalties; limited penalty; between worship and penalty; worship with a levy; levy with worship; levy with penalty; a right standing by itself. (v2/289–290)
• Pure worship, in rank: faith first: assent of the heart never drops, and spoken acknowledgement is a pillar with it; under coercion the acknowledgement counts as faith in worldly rulings (for a ḥarbī or a dhimmī alike; al-Shāfiʿī: not for a dhimmī coerced wrongly), while a coerced apostasy does not count. Then prayer (worship through the House: facing the qibla stands for "the face of God", which has no direction), so it is a law of faith, not faith itself; zakāt (thanks for wealth, through the poor, who can deserve by need, so a rank below prayer); fasting (thanks for the body through subduing the self); ḥajj (visiting the House, honouring times and places); ʿumra, a strong sunna, since the means does not multiply duty; jihād, a collective duty ("the hump of religion"); iʿtikāf, an extra worship aiming at more prayer. (v2/290–292)
• Levies: ṣadaqat al-fiṭr is worship with a levy (needs intention, but is owed for a child's property and for others); the tithe (ʿushr) is a levy with worship; kharāj a levy with penalty (humiliation: "this never enters a people's house but they are humbled"), so a Muslim is not first charged kharāj but keeps it after converting. ⚑ Tithe land passing into a dhimmī's ownership: Abū Ḥanīfa: it becomes kharāj land (no worship from an unbeliever); Abū Yūsuf: the tithe is doubled, like Banū Taghlib (Abū Ḥanīfa: that was a consensus for a particular people, against qiyās); Muḥammad: it stays tithe land, with two reports from him on where it goes: in one, to the fighters, like kharāj; in the other, to its former recipients, the poor. (v2/292–293)
• Standing by itself: the fifth of spoils, mines and treasure: all spoils are God's (Q 8:1), four fifths given to the fighters as a favour; so it may go to needy fighters or finders and to Banū Hāshim (it carries no taint of dirt); the share of "the near kin" was for their special support of the Prophet in the valley, not for kinship as such; kinship (a created fact that earns nothing by itself) and support cannot be made to strengthen each other, since a corroborating factor must be one that could not be a cause on its own. (v2/293–294) → B16.01
• Penalties: pure penalties are the ḥudūd (zinā, theft, wine). Limited penalty: loss of inheritance for a forbidden killing, which reaches one who kills by mistake or rolls over in sleep, but not a child or madman, nor one who only causes (leading, driving, a retracting witness, digging a well, placing a stone); al-Shāfiʿī: a liability like blood-money, so it reaches the causer and the child too; «وَهَذَا غلط بَين» (v2/295) — "this is a plain error": liability repairs and can be waived. (v2/294–295)
• Between worship and penalty: expiations: penalty as a cover for sin, worship as performed by oneself by fatwā, not imposed; their cause lies between forbidden and permitted (the future oath; mistaken killing), so not the false oath or deliberate killing; al-Shāfiʿī: owed by way of liability; Sarakhsī: "we have shown this is an error", since liability repairs a loss and God suffers none; worship dominates, so the mistaken, the coerced, and the one who swore not to speak to a kāfir who then converts owe it, and the kāfir does not. The Ramaḍān expiation is dominated by penalty (the Bedouin's "I am ruined"), so it falls by doubts: the lone crescent-sighter, illness or menstruation that day, a traveller, one who intended before midday, and it merges for several days; its payment is still worship. (v2/295–296)
• Mixed: ḥadd for slander, God's right dominant (unlike the highway ḥadd, purely God's, not applied to a mustaʾman); retaliation, people's right dominant (it drops by doubt, but inheritance, pardon and settlement apply); purely people's rights are countless (blood-money, damages, usurpation). (v2/296–297)

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B18.02 · الأصل والخلف · Every right has an original and a substitute; the substitute is owed by the same cause, only if the cause first met its object, and the ruling passes to it on inability to perform the original (v2/297–300)

• Faith: assent and acknowledgement; then acknowledgement alone under coercion; the parents' faith for a child; the Abode for a child captured alone; affiliation to the Muslim to whom he is allotted or sold in enemy land (so he is prayed over if he dies). (v2/297)
• Tayammum: an absolute substitute for us; al-Shāfiʿī: a necessity substitute (no tayammum before the time; one per obligatory prayer; not for an illness short of danger to life; searching between two vessels; seeking water first); for us it acts as the original while inability lasts. ⚑ Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf: earth substitutes for water; Muḥammad: tayammum for wuḍūʾ; so for Muḥammad one with tayammum does not lead those with wuḍūʾ. Tayammum can also be a substitute of necessity while water is available, when wuḍūʾ would mean missing a funeral prayer or the ʿīd prayer: then for Muḥammad a second funeral brought in needs a new tayammum, even with no time for wuḍūʾ between them; for the two, it holds for further funerals until he has time for wuḍūʾ without missing one. (v2/297–298)
• Position: «أَن الْخلف يجب بِمَا بِهِ يجب الأَصْل» (v2/298) — "the substitute is owed by what makes the original owed", on condition that the cause met its object, «ثمَّ بِالْعَجزِ عَنهُ يتَحَوَّل الحكم إِلَى الْخلف» (v2/298) — "then on inability to perform it, the ruling passes to the substitute": tears, spit and sweat, which do not require wuḍūʾ, do not require tayammum; divorce before consummation, with no ʿidda by periods, has none by months; the true oath, no expiation; the false oath (no possible keeping) none; an oath to touch the sky (keeping conceivable) does; one who converts at the very end of a prayer time owes the make-up. (v2/298–299)
• ⚑ Furūʿ test: Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad: when the "killed" man appears alive after retaliation, or witnesses and the avenger retract, witnesses made liable recover from the avenger (the blood can in a way be owned; like the second usurper of a mudabbar; the witnesses to a kitāba); Abū Ḥanīfa: they do not: the witnesses destroyed the life in law and the avenger in fact, which are equal for liability, and if the avenger pays he does not recover from them (unlike witnesses to a mistaken killing, where the blood-money is owned property); and blood is not owned by liability (no retaliation in the Ḥaram; no substitute if the killer is killed wrongly), so the cause never met its object. (v2/299–300)

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B18.03 · تعريف السبب والعلة والشرط والعلامة · Cause (sabab) is a path to the ruling; effective cause (ʿilla) changes the state by occurring in it; condition is what the ruling exists at, not by; a sign only makes it known (v2/301–304)

• Cause (sabab): in language a path, door or rope; in rulings «عبارَة عَمَّا يكون طَرِيقا للوصول إِلَى الحكم الْمَطْلُوب من غير أَن يكون الْوُصُول بِهِ» (v2/301) — "what is a way to reach the ruling sought, without reaching it by it", like the road to Mecca or the rope to the well. (v2/301)
• Effective cause (ʿilla): what changes the state by occurring in it (illness; a wound; not the wounder, who acts by choice); in law, a meaning in texts found by inference (measure in wheat). Sale for ownership, marriage for lawfulness, deliberate killing for retaliation: made effective causes (ʿilal) by the Law, while «لَا مُوجب إِلَّا الله» (v2/302) — "none makes anything binding but God": that binding is hidden from us, so the Law made causes we can see into effective causes for us, for ease; as He gives death while death is ascribed to the killer, and rewards while reward is ascribed to deeds (Q 32:17): the middle way between the Jabriyya, who cancel deeds, and the Qadariyya, who make man independent. An effective cause (ʿilla) may be called a proof (dalīl), but a mere proof is never an ʿilla (the smoke and the fire; the world and the Maker). (v2/301–302)
• Condition (sharṭ): in language a fixed sign ("the signs of the Hour"; the policeman's uniform); in law what the ruling is ascribed to «وجودا عِنْده لَا وجوبا بِهِ» (v2/303) — "as existing at it, not as caused by it": in "if you enter the house you are divorced", the entering is condition; so witnesses to the condition who retract are not liable, witnesses to the suspension are. A condition may stand in for a cause for liability when the cause cannot bear it (the well-digger), unless someone pushes the victim. Sign (ʿalāma): what makes a ruling known (a milestone, a minaret; "cursed is he who moves the land's boundary marks"). (v2/302–304)

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B18.04 · تقسيم السبب · Four kinds of cause (sabab): figurative, pure, with a likeness to an effective cause (ʿilla), and in the meaning of an ʿilla (v2/304–312)

• Figurative: an oath by God is a cause of expiation in form only, since it forbids breaking it; so too a vow or divorce suspended on a condition. So suspending on ownership is valid, expiation before breaking the oath is not (unlike expiation after a wound before death, or zakāt before the year), and the oath ends when broken. It still has a shade of causality, ⚑ against Zufar: an immediate triple divorce voids an earlier suspension, since the suspension needs ownership to remain. A time-reference does not remove causality (make-up "on other days"), but a condition does ("seven when you return", Q 2:196). (v2/304–306)
• Pure cause: a path to the ruling, with an independent effective cause between them: freeing a slave's shackle (he runs away); opening a stable or a cage; pointing out someone's property, person or caravan; "this woman is free" (he marries her; no recovery for the children's value, unlike one who himself married her to him as free); the gift of a slave woman later claimed, or a loan destroyed by use then claimed (unlike a sale, which guarantees soundness). ⚑ Some of our colleagues ground the deceived buyer's recovery in a surety; «إِلَّا أَن الأول أصح» (v2/308) — "but the first is sounder" (the maʾdhūn slave who leased an animal destroyed by the lessee and then claimed: the lessee recovers from the slave at once, though a slave is not held to a surety until freed, so the recovery is not by surety). Not so the muḥrim who points out game (he broke the safety he undertook; «إِلَّا أَن قبل الْقَتْل لَا يجب عَلَيْهِ الضَّمَان» (v2/308) — "but before the killing no liability is owed by him", since the game may yet hide and be safe again), the depositary who points out the deposit to a thief, or taking a gazelle out of the Ḥaram (liable for its young), unlike a usurper for increase. Handing a knife to a child who stabs himself (no liability) vs the knife slipping from the child's hand onto his foot (liable: the fall is ascribed to the handing); taking a free child who dies of illness (none) vs taking him near wild beasts; "climb and shake it for me" (liable) vs "for yourself". One half of a two-part cause is a pure cause: the ruling goes to the last part (a partner who claims descent; buying half a relative; witnesses to descent after death; "if you enter these two houses"; a ship that can carry a hundred mann and is loaded to that, when someone adds one more mann and it sinks: he is liable for all, since the cause of sinking was completed by his act). (v2/306–311)
• ⚑ Furūʿ test: Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf: of the thrice-boiled drink, the last cup is the forbidden intoxication; Muḥammad left this rule here for caution. (v2/311)
• In the meaning of an effective cause (v2/311–312): leading or driving an animal, a projecting beam, a stone in the road, a leaning wall after warning, letting an animal into a crop, cutting a lamp's rope, slitting a skin: liable, but no loss of inheritance or expiation. Witnesses for retaliation: al-Shāfiʿī: a strong causation that brings retaliation on them; we: the qāḍī judges by choice, so it remains causation, and retaliation needs direct action. The guide who went with the raiders shares the spoils; one who only described the way does not.
• Cause with a likeness to an effective cause (ʿilla): digging a well in the road (creating the condition of falling; the ʿilla is the walker's weight): blood-money, not expiation or loss of inheritance, «فَإِذا كَانَ ذَلِك تَعَديا مِنْهُ وَجب الضَّمَان عَلَيْهِ» (v2/312) — "if that was a wrong on his part, liability is owed by him", unless someone pushed the victim in; the wife who nurses the infant co-wife owes the husband the half dower if she meant harm. (v2/312)

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B18.05 · تقسيم العلة · Six kinds of effective cause (ʿilla), by name, meaning and effect (ḥukm) (v2/312–320)

• The book glosses its terms: "meaning" is being the effective factor, "ruling" (ḥukm, rendered "effect" here) is that the ruling attaches at it (v2/318). Real (name, meaning and effect): sale, marriage, manumission, divorce. ⚑ «وَاخْتلف مَشَايِخنَا» (v2/313) — "our shaykhs differ" whether the ruling may lag behind it; «وَالأَصَح عندنَا أَنه لَا يجوز تَأَخّر الحكم عَن هَذِه الْعلَّة» — "the soundest, for us: the ruling may not lag behind this cause", like capacity with the act. (v2/313)
• Name only: a suspended divorce or manumission, an oath before breaking. Name and meaning, not effect: the suspended sale (effect on ratification, back to the contract); sale with the seller's option (the option enters the ruling, not the sale); the lease (effect with each usufruct); the revocable divorce. (v2/313–315)
• An ʿilla resembling a sabab: «أَن يكون مَا يُضَاف إِلَيْهِ الحكم أَصله مَوْجُودا وَصفته منتظرا مُتَأَخِّرًا فِي وجوده خطر» (v2/315) — "what the ruling is ascribed to exists at root, while its attribute is awaited, delayed, and uncertain to come": as the root exists it is an ʿilla, and as the ruling waits on the attribute it is a path, a sabab; unlike a mere deferral of a completed cause, payment before the attribute is not yet payment of what is due, and counts only once the attribute comes. Examples: the nisāb awaiting growth over the year (payment in advance counts once the year completes; not for fodder-fed camels); the final illness for gifts beyond a third; a wound for expiation; the cause of a cause (shooting; buying a relative with intent of expiation, unlike one sworn free); Abū Ḥanīfa: character witnesses for zinā witnesses are liable on retraction (either group that retracts is liable); "the last slave I buy is free". ⚑ Some of our shaykhs put a time-referred obligation here; «وَالأَصَح عِنْدِي أَنه من الْقسم الثَّالِث» (v2/317) — "the soundest to me is that it is of the third kind": a vow to give a dirham tomorrow may be given today; ⚑ Abū Yūsuf: a fast or prayer vowed for a future time may be done earlier; Muḥammad: not. (v2/315–317)
• Meaning and effect, not name: the later of two parts (kinship with ownership frees; one part of the ribā cause forbids delay, "sell as you like, hand to hand"); not the second witness, since the qāḍī's judgment rests on both. Name and effect, not meaning: travel and illness, each with its specified description, for concessions (the meaning is hardship, Q 2:185, too hidden to measure), so one who travels after starting a fast owes no expiation if he breaks it, though breaking it is not permitted to him that day; sleep, in a specified posture (lying down or reclining, a sign that the joints have relaxed), for ḥadath; marriage for descent; touching with desire and marriage for in-law prohibition; new ownership for istibrāʾ. Two kinds: the thing that leads to the meaning stands for it, and the sign stands for the signified (sleep; the meeting of the circumcised parts; Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf: lewd contact (mubāshara fāḥisha) breaks wuḍūʾ, no dissent stated here; "if you love me", "if you menstruate"); by necessity, caution, or removing hardship (leases). «فَهَذِهِ حُدُود يتم بمعرفتها فقه الرجل» (v2/320) — "these are limits by knowing which a man's fiqh is complete". (v2/317–320)

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B18.06 · تقسيم الشرط والعلامة · Six kinds of condition (pure; in the ruling of an ʿilla; resembling an ʿilla; in the meaning of a sabab; in name only; a sign) and four kinds of sign (v2/320–332)

• Pure condition: the cause's reality waits on it ("if you enter"): so worship waits on knowledge of the command (a convert in enemy lands owes no make-up; in Islamic lands the spread of the address stands for knowledge); prayer's pillars on intention and purity; marriage on witnesses. Known by wording or by implication ("the woman I marry among you", an indefinite description, unlike "this woman whom I marry"). ⚑ Some later shaykhs say "if you know good in them" (Q 24:33) is only habitual; Sarakhsī: «هَذَا لَيْسَ بِقَوي عِنْدِي» (v2/321) — "this is not strong to me": God's speech has no idle condition; it makes the contract recommended. So too Q 4:25 and Q 4:101 (shortening the prayer's form in fear); the stepdaughters clause (Q 4:23) is not in conditional form, but the next clause ("if you have not consummated with them, there is no blame") makes permission depend on that condition. (v2/320–322)
• In the ruling of an effective cause (fī ḥukm al-ʿilla): slitting a skin of oil, cutting a lamp's rope, a wound that spreads into death, which counts as direct killing, «حَتَّى يجب الْقصاص بِهِ إِذا كَانَ عمدا» (v2/323) — "so that retaliation is owed for it, if it was intentional". Abū Ḥanīfa: witnesses that the shackle weighs ten raṭl, then freed by the qāḍī, are liable when it weighs five. Resembling an effective cause (fīhi shubhat al-ʿilla): where what intervenes cannot by itself be an ʿilla (the well; witnesses of suspension vs of condition; the witnesses to the wife's choosing are liable, not those to the grant of choice; the digger's word that the victim threw himself in, by istiḥsān; the wounder's word does not count; the usurper who sows wheat owns the crop, while wind-blown grain belongs to its owner). In the meaning of a cause (fī maʿnā al-sabab): an independent choice intervenes (the shackle; a loosed animal that turns aside; a runaway animal; ⚑ Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf: the open cage or stable, the bird or animal leaving at once, no liability (one who throws himself into the well, or walks knowingly on a shaky bridge, even one placed without right, or a wet patch, likewise gets nothing); Muḥammad: liable, since an animal's act is nothing in law; the two: it can cut a ruling though not create one (the game leaving the Ḥaram); al-Shāfiʿī: a charging camel may be killed without liability; we: the killer owes its value, since its act cannot impose loss on its owner); setting a dog on property, fire carried by wind, vermin thrown in the road. (v2/322–327)
• Name only: the first of two conditions ("these two houses"): ownership is not needed at the first, ⚑ against Zufar. Sign: iḥṣān for stoning (zinā causes; iḥṣān only shows it; «وَلَو وجد الْإِحْصَان بعد الزِّنَا لَا يثبت بِوُجُودِهِ حكم الرَّجْم» (v2/328) — "if iḥṣān came about after the zinā, stoning would not be established by it", so it is not a condition): no liability for its retracting witnesses, unlike character witnesses (Abū Ḥanīfa); iḥṣān is proved by one man and two women, ⚑ against Zufar (the Christian witnesses to a slave's earlier freedom differ, since kāfir testimony does not bind a Muslim). ⚑ Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad: the midwife proves a birth on which divorce or manumission was suspended (where he had not acknowledged pregnancy), and a birth in ʿidda for descent (with no evident pregnancy, subsisting marriage bed (firāsh) or acknowledgement), since birth there is only a sign; Abū Ḥanīfa: not; in the divorce case birth is a pure condition and the midwife is a necessity proof only for birth's own rulings or what birth cannot be separated from; in the descent case, for us (who judge by the outward) descent rests on the birth, though with an evident pregnancy, a subsisting marriage bed (firāsh) or acknowledgement he agrees; likewise the newborn's cry for inheritance. (v2/327–330)
• Signs: pure (a garment's mark, an army's banner); in the meaning of a condition (iḥṣān); an effective cause (legal causes are signs); figuratively, the causes of real things. al-Shāfiʿī: the slanderer's failure to bring four witnesses is a sign for the rejection of his testimony (the slander itself voids it) and a condition for the flogging; we: it is a condition of both flogging and rejection (Q 24:4), fixed by giving him time; slander is not in itself a great sin: it may be proved, may be ḥisba against an unrepentant fornicator, and witnesses to zinā are slanderers in fact. ⚑ In al-Muntaqā, one of Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad: if he later brings four witnesses his testimony is restored; the other: not. (v2/331–332)
• [Editorial] Debate note: B18's vocabulary (sabab, ʿilla, sharṭ, ʿalāma, and their mixed kinds) is what the Ḥanafī liability furūʿ turn on: who pays when a cause, a condition and a free choice combine. A debater should place each actor on this scale before arguing liability.

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