Ownership (milk) and its kinds, causes and limits

In the lexicon milk is having a thing in hand and the power to dispose of it alone. For the jurists it is a legal capacity to use the owned thing and take its return, as Qarafi and Ibn al-Shat defined it. ^{1 2}

Haqq is wider than milk: in the lexicon it means the opposite of falsehood, a share, or what cannot be denied, and in law a fixed duty owed to God or to people. ²

Islam guards ownership and forbids encroaching on it. Jurists cite the verses on not eating one another's property in falsehood, and the saying: 'your blood, your property and your honour are sacred to you'. Ownership is held as a trust from God, who is its true owner. ^{2 3}

Ownership is full or partial depending on whether one holds the thing and its use together. It is private or public (water, pasture and fire are held in common). It is by choice or by compulsion, as in inheritance and pre-emption. It is stable or unstable, as a rent before its use or a price before delivery. ^{3 4 5 6}

Ibn Najim lists causes including exchanges, dowry, khul', inheritance, gifts, alms, bequests, endowment, booty, taking the unowned, reviving dead land, and finding a lost thing. Forbidden means such as theft, usurpation, gambling and riba do not create ownership. ^{6 7 8}

The owner must not waste or be miserly, must not use what the law forbids, should in general make his property productive, and must not harm others. The jurists differ on whether a neighbour may be stopped from ordinary uses that harm him: the early Hanafis and Shafi'is did not stop them, the Malikis and the stronger Hanbali report stopped them where harm was intended or excessive. ^{8 9 10}

A transfer requires free consent, not vitiated by deceit, coercion or mistake, on the saying: 'sale is only by mutual consent'. The will of a dying person is limited to one third. ^{10 11}

The ruler may take property for public benefit against fair compensation, as with enlarging a mosque or a road. Reviving dead land, mines (the Malikis treat them as state property), hima, price-fixing and hoarding are regulated. ^{11 12 13}

Pre-emption, forced sale of a debtor's property to pay creditors (most jurists, except Abu Hanifa), the sale of a pledge, and the sale of a shared thing that cannot be divided are all forms in which ownership is taken or sold against the owner's will. ^{13 14}