With the Hadith - Bilal Al-Muzani came to the Messenger of God ﷺ and requested a land grant
We greet you all, dear listeners everywhere, in a new episode of your program "With the Hadith." We begin with the best greeting, may peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you.
Al-Bayhaqi narrated in Al-Sunan Al-Kubra:
(He informed us) Abu Saeed bin Abi Amr, Abu Al-Abbas Al-Asamm narrated to us, Al-Hasan bin Ali narrated to us, Yahya bin Adam narrated to us, Yunus narrated to us from Muhammad bin Ishaq from Abdullah bin Abi Bakr who said: Bilal bin Al-Harith Al-Muzani came to the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and requested a land grant, so he granted him a long and wide piece of land. When Omar took over, he said to him: O Bilal, you requested a long and wide piece of land from the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, and he granted it to you. The Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, would not have withheld anything that was asked of him, but you cannot manage what is in your hands. He said: Yes. He said: See what you can manage of it and keep it, and what you cannot manage, give it back to us to divide among the Muslims. He said: By God, I will not do it, it is something that the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace, granted to me. Omar said: By God, you will do it. So he took from him what he could not cultivate, and divided it among the Muslims.
Dear listeners:
Land is a treasure that differs from other money and properties... It contains advantages that are not found in many properties. It is a place for agriculture... and for extracting treasures and minerals from its depths... and a place for establishing buildings for various purposes... whether commercial, such as building commercial and industrial buildings and warehouses, or personal, such as residential buildings, or facilities such as government service buildings from hospitals, schools, and departments.
Therefore, land should not be abandoned or left without use, because neglecting it causes loss and waste of the necessary benefits for people's lives... Hence, the Sharia emphasized the necessity of exploiting the land when it legislated its ownership through exchange, inheritance, revival, or grant... Rather, it emphasized the necessity of exploiting it for agriculture in particular and for all permissible uses in general, when it gave the state the right to seize the land that its owner neglects and disables for three consecutive years, to give it to whoever wants to cultivate and exploit it.
In the hadith, there is a reference to this emphasis... Bilal requested a large piece of land from the Messenger, and the Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace, granted it to him... But it was too large for him to cultivate all of it, so he left it without cultivation or construction...
However, the ruler... the Caliph of the Muslims... whom God has entrusted with taking care of the interests of the Muslims... by applying God's laws to them, noticed the fact that Bilal took land and disabled it by leaving it without construction... and realized that this neglect and disruption was a waste of people's interests, so he forced Bilal to relinquish the area of land that he could not build on... and kept for him what he could manage, that is, what he was able to build on and cultivate... And that was in the sight of the Companions, may God be pleased with them, so it was a consensus among them that whoever disables land has lost his right to own it.
This is general for all land... and not specific to the granted or revived land... but it applies to it and other inherited or exchanged lands as long as they are agricultural...
...And we have the hadith of the Messenger of God, may God bless him and grant him peace: Whoever has land, let him cultivate it or grant it to his brother... Our generous Messenger, may God bless him and grant him peace... did not specify the type of land or the method of owning it, but made the expression general for all land, regardless of the method of owning it... revival, grant, exchange, or inheritance.
The consensus of the Companions on accepting Omar's action in our hadith today clarified that whoever disables land granted to him by the state, the state has the right to reclaim it and grant it to someone else. From this hadith, dear listeners, we understand the wisdom of the legitimacy of revival and granting, which is for the sake of work and exploiting the land, and not for increasing the owned areas. Whoever gives the land its right of work and investment continues to own it... and whoever disables it due to negligence or inability to exploit it loses his right to own it if his negligence or disruption continues for three consecutive years... and someone else has the right to take it and exploit it, but if that land is a grant from the state, then the state has the right to reclaim it and grant it to someone else to cultivate it.
It is worth mentioning that working on the land does not necessarily have to be done by the owner of the land himself... Rather, he can work on it himself and spend on it from his money, as he can hire workers to work on it and pay them wages, spending from his money on the wages of the workers and the prices of the seeds and machines used in it... If he is unable to spend, the state will help him with the expenses.
But if he does not want to cultivate it, then he must grant it to someone else to cultivate it without compensation... because of his prohibition, may God bless him and grant him peace, of leasing land for agriculture.
Dear listeners, until we meet you with another prophetic hadith, we leave you in God's care, and may peace, mercy, and blessings of God be upon you.
