Contracts (al-'uqud)

"Uqud" is the plural of "aqd", which originally means joining the ends of a thing and tying them together, and was then used for covenants, sales and marriage. In his commentary on the opening of Surat al-Ma'ida, Muhammad Rashid Rida sets out the views of the exegetes on the meaning of the command to fulfil contracts, and then criticises what some jurists require for a contract to be valid. ^{1 2} Al-Ma'ida 1

Rida reports from Ibn Abbas that the intended meaning of the contracts is God's covenant with His servants; from Qatada that they are the alliance contracts of the pre-Islamic period; and from Abdullah ibn Ubayda that there are five kinds of contract: the bond of faith, the bond of marriage, the bond of sale, the bond of covenant and the bond of alliance. ¹

Rida sets out the classification of al-Raghib al-Isfahani of contracts by what is contracted between God and the servant, between the servant and himself, and between people, and by what makes them binding. From this he derives kinds that must be fulfilled, kinds whose fulfilment is recommended, kinds whose abandonment is recommended, and kinds that must be abandoned. ²

Rida states that types of transactions had been renewed in his time, that among the jurists of the codified schools some permitted them and some did not, and that some required the offer and acceptance to be spoken, so that a written contract signed by hand or stamped was not regarded as valid. ²

Rida criticises those who clothe the obligation of contracting parties to a permissible contract with a religious colour, so that they make its fulfilment forbidden because the contract is not valid. He holds that the apparent meaning of the verse is fulfilment of every contract except one whose abandonment is an act of devotion or an obligation. ²

The criticism and the preference in this paragraph are Rida's, and are attributed to him. The views of the codifying jurists on the conditions of a contract have not yet been presented, nor the jurisprudential text on which those who require a spoken formula rely.