economic thought in the qur"àn and sunnah 59society as a whole and when can it be regarded as a natural resource?
While the answer to these questions is not so difficult in a simple
nomadic society, such as that of the early Islamic state, it is difficult
to be determined in a more complicated society, such as that of con-
temporary Muslim states. This is one of the areas where the impor-
tance of jurisprudence appears; jurists derive new rules, from the
Qur"àn and the Sunnah, to suit new needs. For example, after the
excavation of minerals on a relatively large scale, some medieval
Islamic jurists, such as Imam Màlik were of the opinion that the
product should not belong to the owner of the land, instead it ought
to belong to the society, i.e. the state (Al-Zarqani, 1990). The impor-
tance of this view becomes clear if we know that Sharì"ah has
approached this issue with rules varying depending upon the type
of ownership of the land and how the ownership has come to the
holder, which may be summarised in the general rule that whatever
is found buried in a piece of land is regarded as a treasure belong-
ing to the owner of the land with only Zakàh on the discovered
treasure, representing the right of the state on it (Al-Kalby, 1989).
What is said about mines might be also applied to oilfields.
The issue of defining what should be put under the control of the
state and included in public ownership, or that which could be left
to the individual to embrace in private ownership, has been of inter-
est to various jurists and scholars of different schools of thought.
Public ownership has changed in terms of size and type of owner-
ship throughout Islamic economic history, as will be discussed fur-
ther later. We will, for example, see in the next chapter how the
head of state second Caliph Umar ibn-al-Khattàb had assumed fur-
ther control of land to ensure its most efficient use. Furthermore,
conquered land was not to be distributed to Muslims, as had been
the case before, but to be put under the ownership of the state for
the use of all members in the community. Even further, those who
had private land before the conquest, were asked to give to the state
what was beyond their ability to cultivate.
Moreover, we will also see how the state, not the society, claimed
the ownership of land in what became known as sawàfì land or
Crown Estate. Moreover, the head of state, the Caliph, allowed him-
self the free disposition of this land to whom he saw fit in serving
the state with devotion. Gradually this transfer of the ownership of
Crown Estate to individuals, for their services led to consequences
that were not known to Muslims in their early history: the development