Acknowledgment of a debt to a specific person, followed by its loss
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
Question:
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. If a person admits that a date palm tree belongs to so-and-so, and then the tree perishes after some time, is it permissible for him to plant a new date palm in its place?
Answer:
Have you heard that if he admits to a tree, the land does not follow the tree, because the land is the root and the tree is the branch, and the root does not follow the branch; rather, the opposite is the case: the branch follows the tree. So if he admits to a piece of land and there are trees on it, the trees follow it, and they belong to the person to whom the admission was made.
He says: Honorable Shaykh, may Allah grant you success. If a person admits that a date palm tree belongs to so-and-so, and then the tree perishes after some time, is it permissible for him to plant a new date palm in its place?
Answer:
Have you heard that if he admits to a tree, the land does not follow the tree, because the land is the root and the tree is the branch, and the root does not follow the branch; rather, the opposite is the case: the branch follows the tree. So if he admits to a piece of land and there are trees on it, the trees follow it, and they belong to the person to whom the admission was made.
Source
شرح أخصر المختصرات في الفقه، كتاب الإقرار — islamhouse.com (43:00)
The Arabic text is a machine transcription of the audio recording.