The Stolen Saddle

An account illustrates the point. Sayyidinā ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him) entered the masjid of Kūfah with an assistant, and at the entrance a man was standing. ʿAlī looked at his face and judged him trustworthy, and asked whether he would look after their two horses while they prayed inside for ten minutes or so. The man agreed readily, not knowing that the one asking him was the Amīr al-Muʾminīn. Before going in to pray, ʿAlī, thinking the man kind for agreeing, took five dirhams from his own pocket to give him afterwards as a gift, unasked for.

They prayed and came out to find both the horse and the man gone. ʿAlī sent his assistant to the market at once to buy a replacement horse — but before the assistant could set off, the horse's own head was seen around a corner: the saddle and the reins had been taken, the horse itself left behind, since the thief had made off with whatever could most easily be turned into cash. With the horse safe after all, the errand changed: ʿAlī sent his assistant to the marketplace instead to buy only a saddle, so they could ride home. At the stalls where saddles and reins were sold, the assistant caught sight of ʿAlī's own saddle for sale on a counter. He told the trader plainly that it belonged to them, and explained the theft. The trader, an honest man, said that only five minutes before, someone had come and sold it to him for five dirhams; since the seller had had no true ownership of stolen property, no sale had genuinely taken place, and he wanted no profit from it — his five dirhams back would settle it, and the saddle could be taken.

The saddle was carried back, and a crowd gathered around the Khalīfah as he explained what had happened. He drew out the lesson himself: he had meant to give the man five halal dirhams as a gift. Allah (swt) had written five dirhams for him, no more — but he had chosen to take them by an unlawful path instead, stealing the saddle and selling it for cash for exactly that sum, the very five dirhams that had already been meant for him. Nothing was lost to ʿAlī, who kept the ḥasanah, the reward, of the gift he had intended; nothing was lost to the honest trader either, whose own income remained lawful throughout. It was the thief alone who was endangered by his own haste, settling for an unlawful five dirhams when a lawful five dirhams would have reached him regardless, had he simply waited. This is the working of Allah's (swt) qadar. Rizq is fixed, and it does not change.