State ownership (milkiyyat al-dawla)

State ownership is a third kind of property that al-Tahir Qana, in al-Dawr al-Tawzi'i li-l-Milkiyya fi al-Iqtisad al-Islami, separates from public ownership; he notes that some writers use a twofold division that places state property within public property, regards the difference as one of form, and prefers the threefold division for showing economic and social roles more clearly. ¹ He defines it as that whose owner is the public treasury as a legal person, like private wealth in its owners' hands, which the ruler may dispose of in every lawful way for the public good; he quotes al-Mawardi that any wealth due to the Muslims whose owner is not specified belongs to the treasury, and that the treasury is an authority, not a place. ²

He cites the verse on fay' (al-Hashr 7) and the verse on spoils (al-Anfal 41), and quotes al-Mawardi's division of the wealth due to Muslims into fay', spoils and alms: fay' belongs to the treasury because its use rests on the imam's judgement, unlike spoils, which belong to those who fought. ^{2 3} From the Sunna he cites Ibn Abbas's report that when the Prophet ﷺ came to Medina the Helpers gave him all land the water did not reach, to do with as he wished; the report of Wa'il ibn Hujr's land grant in Hadramawt; al-Sa'b ibn Jaththama's hadith "no protected land except for God and His Messenger"; and the Prophet's protection of al-Naqi' and Umar's of al-Sharaf and al-Rabadha. He sees protected pasture as a form of public property that becomes state property when reserved for the state's purposes. ³ He also cites Abu Hurayra (may God be pleased with him)'s hadith "whoever leaves a debt, its payment is on me", as showing that individuals' debts were paid from the treasury. ⁴

He counts among its domains the treasury of zakat with its fixed recipients; the treasury of public interests, fed by land tax, fay', the fifth of spoils, jizya, tithes and buried treasure; the treasury of ownerless property, such as the estate of one with no heir and lost property; and dead land without an owner. ^{5 6} Dead land, he holds, belongs to the state until revived and becomes private property on condition of reviving it; one who claims land and does not cultivate it within three years loses it. ⁷ Among the means of protecting state property are the ban on theft, embezzlement and destruction, and the supervisory and penal bodies set up in the early Islamic state. ⁶