Al-^Ariyyah: (About the Borrowed Articles)
The one who wants to borrow something or to lend an article needs to know enough information about the rules pertaining to this transaction before doing it. Al-^ariyyah means allowing someone to benefit from an article for free without consuming the article itself or part of it when benefiting from it. Example of borrowing/lending an article: you have a horse and you lend it to someone to ride it for free, or you have a truck and you lend it to someone else to remove his belongings from one place to another for free, you have a book and you lend it to someone else to read. So, you are giving permission to the person to use this book, without paying anything in return, and without the book (or part of it) being consumed when using it. Doing that with a good intention is rewardable.
Lending an article is valid with specifying a time limit and without specifying a time limit for that. You can tell someone, “I now lend you this book,” (without specifying a time) and you can say, “I now lend you this book for two days,” or the like (specifying a time). Both ways are valid.
The borrowed article has to be specified. It is not valid to say, “I lend you one of my clothes, or one of my cars”– the borrowed article has to be specified. Also, the one who is borrowing needs to be specified. For example, if someone tells a group of people, “I now lend one of you my car, this is not valid because the borrower is not specified.
He (the borrower) needs to be pubescent and sane.
He (the borrower) is entitled to authorize someone else to acquire the benefit for him. Ex: you lend your car to a person who does not know how to drive. He is entitled to ask someone else to drive it for him to take him from one place to another. The lender can, however, prevent him from doing that. He can tell him “You are the only one who entitled to acquire the benefit from it.” So, in the example, he can tell him, “Take my car, I lend it to you, but, no one else can drive it but you.” If the lender says that, the borrower can take the car and drive it, but he does not allow anyone else to drive it for him.
The lender also needs to be pubescent and sane and not forced under the threat to lend the article to another person. Also, he needs to be the owner of the article’s benefit (yamliku al manfa^ah). Because if he is not the owner of the benefit, how is he going to allow someone else to acquire it? For example if X owns a house and he rents it for a year; during that year, X can not go to a third person and lend that rented house to the third person because during the year (the period which he rented the house) X does not own the benefit of the house. The benefit of the house is in the ownership of the lessee (the renter).
It is a condition also that the borrowed article is not consumed when acquiring the benefit. This is why it is not valid to lend an apple to someone to eat it because when he eats it, it is consumed.
Note: The term ‘lending’ in English is used with 2 meanings. One, when you lend someone something to use it and get the benefit from it—without consuming it and you return the exact thing that was lent (i.e., a book or a car) The person returns the same book or car that he borrowed—not a similar book or car. This is al-^Ariyyah. A second type of lending is when you lend someone something to use (it is consumed) and he returns you the same quantity of the same kind (i.e., $1,000 or a gallon of gas). This is al-Qard.??? The person cannot return the exact same physical entity (the dollar bills or the gas) that he borrowed—he returns a similar quantity of the same kind (he returns $1,000 or a gallon of gas).
If the borrower uses the borrowed article as he was permitted without falling short in keeping it, without using it in something in which he was not permitted to use it, and then this article gets damaged or the like, then the borrower does not have to pay anything to the lender. For example: Someone lends you his horse to ride. You ride it and while riding it, the horse dies. Then you do not have to pay anything to the lender because you used it as it was permitted for you. Now if he lends you the horse to ride it and you used it to remove stones from one place to another and it dies out of that, you have to pay the value of the horse here because you used it in what was not permitted to you.
The one who borrows an article is not entitled to lend it to someone else without the permission of the owner. If someone lends me a book, I am not entitled, (it is not permissible for me, it is a sin) to lend it to someone else without his permission. I need to take the owner’s permission to lend that borrowed article to someone else.