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B19 · باب أهلية الآدمي لوجوب الحقوق له وعليه · Legal capacity: capacity for obligation (the dhimma) and capacity for performance (limited and complete), and what each supports (v2/332–353)

1. B19.01 · أهلية الوجوب · Capacity for obligation rests on a dhimma fit to bear it; the unborn has it only for rights in its favour (v2/332–333)
2. B19.02 · وجوب حقوق الله على الصبي · Two views among our shaykhs on whether God's rights are owed from birth; Sarakhsī's middle way: obligation needs cause, seat, and fitness for its effect (performance) (v2/333–340)
3. B19.03 · أهلية الأداء · Limited capacity (a discerning child, or an imbecile adult) makes performance valid for faith and bodily worship, not financial worship; complete capacity (sound-minded adulthood) makes it owed (v2/340–346)
4. B19.04 · المعاملات بالأهلية القاصرة · Dealings: pure benefit is valid by limited capacity; pure harm needs complete capacity; mixed dealings are valid with the guardian's opinion (v2/346–353)

B19.01 · أهلية الوجوب · Capacity for obligation rests on a dhimma fit to bear it; the unborn has it only for rights in its favour (v2/332–333)

• Position: two capacities: for obligation, and for performance (complete, which carries liability, and limited, which does not). «فَنَقُول أصل هَذِه الْأَهْلِيَّة لَا يكون إِلَّا بعد ذمَّة صَالِحَة لكَونهَا محلا للْوُجُوب» (v2/333) — "the root of this capacity exists only with a dhimma fit to be the seat of obligation", which is why only humans have it. The dhimma is the covenant (Q 9:10; Q 7:172). (v2/332–333)
• Furūʿ test: the unborn, as part of its mother but with its own life, can receive freedom, inheritance, descent and bequest, but owes nothing; once born it owes damages if it rolls onto someone's property, and a dower its guardian contracts. (v2/333)

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B19.02 · وجوب حقوق الله على الصبي · Two views among our shaykhs on whether God's rights are owed from birth; Sarakhsī's middle way: obligation needs cause, seat, and fitness for its effect (performance) (v2/333–340)

• ⚑ Who: «زعم بعض مَشَايِخنَا» (v2/333) — some of our shaykhs: God's rights are owed from birth by their causes and the fit dhimma, and drop afterwards only to remove hardship; obligation is compulsory, not chosen ("every person's omen We have fastened on his neck", Q 17:13); the sleeper and the unconscious owe prayer; prohibitions by descent, suckling and marriage bind him from birth, and so should obligations; "the pen is lifted from three" means reckoning, which follows the duty to perform. ⚑ Others of our shaykhs: nothing is owed until sound-minded adulthood, since the obligor is God by His address; making the cause obligate empties the command of effect; and an obligation without possible performance is pointless. (v2/333–335)
• Position: «وكلا الطَّرِيقَيْنِ عِنْدِي غير مرضِي» (v2/335) — "neither way is acceptable to me": the first overshoots, the second falls short. After cause and seat, obligation exists only with fitness for its effect, which is the duty to perform and actual performance by choice, so that obedience and disobedience appear (Q 67:2) and reward follows (Q 32:17). So a father who kills his son owes no retaliation: cause and seat exist, but the son could never seek his father's death. «وَهَذَا أعدل الطّرق» (v2/336) — "this is the fairest way". The commands confirm it: "establish prayer, give zakāt", "let him fast it", "complete the ḥajj" command the discharge. (v2/335–336)
• People's rights for a child without discernment: liabilities and counter-values (a price) are owed, performed by the guardian, since the aim is property; maintenance of wives and relatives likewise; a gift resembling a penalty (the ʿāqila's share) is not owed, nor any penalty (killing for apostasy). (v2/336–337)
• God's rights: faith is not owed by a child without reason, nor pure worship, bodily or financial (worship is a chosen act, not done by a guardian imposed on him); proof: if it were owed and only dropped for hardship, his performance would discharge a duty, which by agreement it does not. ⚑ Ṣadaqat al-fiṭr: Muḥammad: not owed (worship dominates); Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf: owed from his property through the guardian (a levy); tithe and kharāj likewise; no penalties. Obligation is not like prohibition for him until he is fit for its effect. Unbelievers likewise owe no acts of worship (unfit to perform while persisting, and for their reward), though prohibitions bind them and faith is owed. Objection: make worship owed by them on condition of first believing. Reply: faith is the root of lasting success, «فَلَا يجوز أَن يَجْعَل شرطا مقتضيا لغيره» (v2/338) — "so it may not be made a condition implied for the sake of something else". (v2/337–338)
• Furūʿ test: a boy who comes of age mid-Ramaḍān makes up nothing past; madness spanning the whole month, or more than a day and night for prayer, removes obligation, and less does not (one who intended at night and was mad all day has fasted); the menstruating woman owes fasting, not prayer; the sleeper owes both; the unconscious like the mad for prayer beyond a day and night. (v2/338–339)
• ⚑ Faith for a discerning child: our teacher, the imam Shams al-Aʾimma al-Ḥalwānī, «يَقُول بِالْوُجُوب فِي حَقه لوُجُود الصلاحية لحكمه وَهُوَ الْأَدَاء» (v2/339) — "held it is owed by him, since he is fit for its effect, which is performance", since he can perform it, his faith counts as obligatory (no renewal at adulthood), and a doubled reward benefits him; and he is separated from his wife if he refuses Islam when she converts. Sarakhsī: «وَالأَصَح عندى أَنه غير ثَابت» (v2/339) — "the soundest to me is that it is not owed" by him (v2/340) until adulthood: sound performance needs the act to be legislated, not owed; once he performs, it is an obligation performed, like a slave's or traveller's Jumuʿa. (v2/339–340)

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B19.03 · أهلية الأداء · Limited capacity (a discerning child, or an imbecile adult) makes performance valid for faith and bodily worship, not financial worship; complete capacity (sound-minded adulthood) makes it owed (v2/340–346)

• Position: limited capacity rests on bodily strength with the root of reason; complete on two abilities, understanding the address (reason) and acting on it (body). «ثمَّ يبتنى على الْأَهْلِيَّة القاصرة صِحَة الْأَدَاء وعَلى الْكَامِلَة وجوب الْأَدَاء وَتوجه الْخطاب بِهِ» (v2/340) — "on limited capacity rests the validity of performance; on complete capacity, the duty to perform and being addressed with it" (Q 2:286; 5:6; 7:157). Reason's root is seen by one's choosing what benefits him; its completeness varies beyond measure, so the Law put sound-minded adulthood in its place, and the ruling turns on that sign ("the pen is lifted from three"). (v2/340–341)
• Faith of a discerning child: valid in this world and the next, since its reality (assent and acknowledgement) exists. (v2/341)
• [OCR-recovered] v2/342–343 (Afghānī pages lost. Witness: Dār Asfār ed., vol. 3, print pp. 488–492, read from the page images (src/asfar_v3.pdf, image index = print page minus 1), checked against the OCR of the critical edition (src/recovered/v2_342-343_CRITICAL_ED_OCR.txt) and of Asfār (src/djvu_asfar3.txt); footnotes excluded; paraphrase only, no quotation. Boundaries: the lost text begins right after T v2/341 ends ("the ruling on a thing's existence rests on its reality") and runs to "and likewise the child" on Asfār 3/492, where T v2/344 resumes): a child can be a guide calling others (Q 19:12, "We gave him judgment as a child", which Sarakhsī says means prophethood), so all the more one who is guided, answering the caller; barring faith would be unbelief; the aim of faith is lasting success, and its consequences (losing inheritance from unbelieving relatives, separation from an unbelieving wife) are effects of the other's unbelief, so his faith is pure benefit; he is not addressed with performance before adulthood (in al-Jāmiʿ: if, asked to describe Islam, he does not, his wife is not separated); Islam is offered to him on his wife's conversion for the validity of his performance, not because it is owed; the separation on his refusal is for the wife's sake, since limited capacity suffices for her rights, as for maintenance (the answer to al-Ḥalwānī's proof, B19.02); likewise it is offered to a madman's father. ⚑ Apostasy, pure ugliness: Abū Yūsuf: not valid from a child in worldly rulings (pure harm); Abū Ḥanīfa and Muḥammad: valid, since if his knowledge of God counts, so does his ignorance; legal barring does not stop it, for the adult too is barred from apostasy yet his apostasy counts; its worldly losses (loss of inheritance, separation) follow necessarily, not as its aim; and his apostasy is already established derivatively when his parents apostatize and go over to enemy territory, even in what harms him and where they have no guardianship over him. But he is not killed: for us killing is a ruling of fighting (muḥāraba), not of apostasy as such, which is why women are not killed for it, and fighting does not exist before adulthood; and killing as a worldly penalty rests on complete capacity. Objection: he is beaten when he neglects discipline ("command them to pray at seven, and beat them over it at ten"), which is a kind of penalty. (v2/342–343)
• Objection, continued (begins at the end of the lost text, Asfār 3/492, and continues on v2/344): likewise the child is enslaved, and enslavement is a penalty for unbelief, a legal destruction; so why is the real destruction (killing) not deserved if his apostasy is valid? (v2/343–344)
• Reply (v2/344): beating is training for the future, like disciplining a mount; enslavement is not a penalty but the capture of what is unprotected, like game; losing protection is like losing health or wealth, not a penalty. (v2/344)
• Uncertain acts of worship (prayer, fasting, zakāt, ḥajj): none is owed; bodily ones are valid by limited capacity (pure benefit: habit), while financial ones harm his property, so even their validity needs complete capacity; validity does not entail bindingness (one who starts a prayer thinking it owed). The opponent (al-khaṣm, unnamed here; in this bāb al-Shāfiʿī is named only at v2/351–352, on the dealings): financial ones are addressed to him through his guardian, bodily ones not, for hardship; reply: both are acts of worship not done by an imposed guardian, and he does not address the child with faith. He counts a child who prays early in the time and comes of age later as having prayed the obligation, and ḥajj if he comes of age before ʿArafa; we: what is done before the address cannot be the obligation (as prayer before ẓuhr was made obligatory). His iḥrām is valid, but he owes no expiations (harm); the opponent: he does, except for oaths. (v2/344–346)

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B19.04 · المعاملات بالأهلية القاصرة · Dealings: pure benefit is valid by limited capacity; pure harm needs complete capacity; mixed dealings are valid with the guardian's opinion (v2/346–353)

• Pure benefit: hunting, earning, gathering wood, accepting gifts; hiring himself out (valid for earning the wage, without the slave's condition of safe completion, but not binding him to deliver himself before the guardian's permission); acting as agent in divorce, manumission, buying and selling (his speech becomes valid, "He taught him eloquence", Q 55:4; testing orphans, Q 4:6), with no liability unless permitted; not testimony, which is authority over others. ⚑ Muḥammad: a discerning child's safe-conduct is valid «وَإِن لم يكن مَأْذُونا فِي الْقِتَال» (v2/347) — "even if he has not been permitted to fight", since it rests on his speech, is pure benefit, and binds no one (it can be repudiated); Abū Ḥanīfa and Abū Yūsuf: not, since it binds others to stop fighting while he binds himself to nothing, as he «لَا يملك مُبَاشرَة الْقِتَال بِنَفسِهِ» (v2/347) — "cannot himself undertake fighting" (an adult first binds himself). A restricted child who fights receives a grant (raḍkh), pure benefit. This should hold on the opponent's rule too (a benefit obtainable through the guardian is not obtained by the child himself), since the raḍkh cannot be earned through the guardian; the opponent (unnamed here) has two views on accepting gifts and alms: in one the child cannot accept by himself and the guardian can; in the other, the reverse. (v2/346–348)
• Pure harm: divorce, manumission, giving gifts and alms: not by himself or by his guardian. ⚑ Some of our shaykhs: divorce is not legislated for him at all; Sarakhsī: «وَهَذَا عِنْدِي وهم» (v2/348) — "to me this is a mistake": he owns divorce with marriage; the harm is only in pronouncing it, so it is valid when needed to remove harm (separation when he refuses Islam, a divorce for Abū Ḥanīfa and Muḥammad; apostasy, a divorce for Muḥammad; majbūb case); ⚑ for the majbūb separation (member cut off) al-Jāmiʿ does not say whether it is a divorce, and our shaykhs differ: a divorce, limited capacity sufficing where need arises; or not, since a discerning child and an infant are equal in this ruling. A guardian's kitāba of the child's share, once the instalments are received, makes him a manumitter liable to the partner if he is well off. (v2/348–349)
• Mixed: sale, purchase, marriage: valid by the guardian or with his permission, which removes the feared harm. ⚑ Abū Ḥanīfa: then even at a gross loss with strangers; the Ṣāḥibān: not, as the guardian himself could not; Abū Ḥanīfa's view is «أوجه فَإِن إِقْرَار الصبى بعد إِذن الولى لَهُ صَحِيح» (v2/350) — "more cogent, since the child's admission after the guardian's permission is valid": though the guardian cannot admit for him; on gross loss with relatives there are two reports from Abū Ḥanīfa: in one it is valid; in the other not, since «التُّهْمَة تتمكن فِي حق الْأَقَارِب دون الْأَجَانِب» (v2/350) — "suspicion has room with relatives, not with strangers". His bequest and tadbīr are invalid (pure harm, forgoing the better course of leaving to relatives); he does not choose between parents after separation (he would choose the lax one), nor does his father for him; child hostages who convert are not returned even with their and their fathers' consent. (v2/349–351)
• Objection → Reply: his admission of slavery (unknown status) is valid; reply: slavery is by the possessor's claim, and he cannot be made a claimant of freedom, as with his apostasy. (v2/351)
• al-Shāfiʿī: al-Shāfiʿī's doctrine in these questions settles on nothing fixed (v2/351–352), «وَإِنَّمَا لَهُ حرف وَاحِد يطرده فِي جَمِيع هَذِه الْفُصُول» (v2/352) — "he has only one rule he runs through all these questions": he counts the child's choice between parents, bequest and tadbīr, but not his Islam or his sales; his one rule is that a benefit obtainable through the guardian is not obtained by his own speech, since being under guardianship and being a guardian are opposites. We: no opposition across different states, as he becomes Muslim by either parent, and a slave follows his master in travel yet acts for himself when left free; widening the ways to benefit is itself a benefit; if a child, Muslim by a parent, describes unbelief, he is an apostate. (v2/352–353)
• [Editorial] Debate note: B19 gives the Ḥanafī structure of capacity (dhimma; limited vs complete; pure benefit, pure harm, mixed) that the furūʿ of children, the mad and converts rest on. The v2/342–343 material (a child's faith and apostasy) is recovered from the Asfār edition (vol. 3 pp. 488–492): cite that edition's printed page, not this map.

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