The duty to return usurped property and its guarantee

This chapter of the encyclopedia of Islamic jurisprudence examines what happens to a usurped item after the usurpation (ghasb): what becomes of the guarantee (daman) when the value falls, when the item is damaged or destroyed, transformed, increased or made to grow? The four schools are quoted with their internal disagreements, their classical references and their proofs drawn from the Quran and the Sunna. The near-unanimous baseline rule: the usurper guarantees the item itself (the ayn), while mere value, which fluctuates with the markets, does not in principle enter the guarantee.

Parts of this section

• Second case: the value of the usurped item decreases without anything happening to it
• Increments of the usurped item: connected increments