The Situation of A Robber in War In The Context of Busr Ibn Abī Arṭāt’s Narration

In addition to conveying the provisions on religion, the Prophet also applied the divine provisions in the natural flow of life. Besides, he was able to make different decisions regarding the execution of the provisions in extraordinary situations. In order to exemplify such an event, a narration conveyed from Busr Ibn Abī Arṭāt (d. 86/705) and suggested that hadd punishment should not be applied to a person who steals during the war has been examined in this study. Busr Ibn Abī Arṭāt, who also has discussions about his being a companion (sahaba), is the only companion who conveys the ḥadīth that goes: The person who steals during war/campaign time is not punished. The authors of sunans, especially Ahmed b. Hanbal (d. 241/855), refer to this ḥadīth as fallows: “The Prophet forbade us to cut our hands in war and do not apply the punishment of theft in war/campaign”. Although there are criticisms against Ibn Lehia in some of the narrations, which are transmitted in fifteen different chains as far as can be determined; in the final sense, the ḥadīth is accepted as authentic. Although Busr Ibn Abī Arṭāt’s narration is accepted as authentic in terms of the science of ḥadīth, it did not receive enough attention in terms of applicability. For example, the Hanafis gave judgment on the basis of the ḥadīth, which is considered weak and states that the hadd punishment will not be applied in dār al-ḥarb instead of this narration. While al-Awzā’ī pointed out that the hadd punishment should be reduced, al-Shāfi’ī expressed his opinion that the hadd punishment should be applied at any time. In this study, after giving information about robbery and its punishment in Islāmic Law, the aforementioned narration was compiled from the main ḥadīth books and the isnad scheme was extracted and later on the content of the narration was analyzed around the approach of Islāmic jurists to the subject.