Withholding food from the market

Identify who holds the food, who needs it and when. Ask which part of food security, availability or access, the practice changes, and what evidence your class would need to measure it.

Read how one answer is built. A food trader asked Jordan's General Iftaa Department about merchants who withhold goods because they know prices will rise soon ². The Department answered that the sharia forbids hoarding because it harms people, defining it as holding what was bought at a time of high prices to sell it dearer when need is acute ². It said hoarding covers all goods people need if withholding them harms people, the Maliki view and that of Abu Yusuf among the Hanafis, quoting Ibn Rushd al-Jadd's al-Bayan wa-l-Tahsil and al-Kasani's Bada'i al-Sana'i ². It said hoarding staple foods is more gravely forbidden, quoting Zakariyya al-Ansari's Asna al-Matalib that it is forbidden because it straitens people, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami's al-Zawajir counting it among the major sins, and his report that al-Ghazali extended staples to what supports them, such as meat and fruit ². The Department published the fatwa as no. 3856, dated 7 March 2024 ². The answer gives harm to people as its reason and rests on jurists it names.

A fatwa is an answer a body published to a question, so it witnesses what the Department answered ²; the museum records it as a document attributed to the body that issued it, and issues no ruling ². The Department quotes jurists and books by name, and the record does not print those texts. In the record of hoarding al-Maraghi defines it as withholding goods to shrink supply, raise prices and let the hoarder dictate sales ³, and cites the hadith "whoever hoards is a sinner" while noting in the margin that some of the chapter's wording is weak ³. Neither record names a merchant who hoarded or a penalty that fell on one; both witness what was ruled, not what happened in markets.

The Department defines hoarding as holding what was bought at a time of high prices to sell it dearer when need is acute ²; al-Maraghi defines it as withholding goods to shrink supply, raise prices and let the hoarder dictate sales ³. Which definition would be easier for an official to apply to a particular merchant, and why?

• Withholding food to wait for higher prices: the question, the answer and the jurists the Department quotes.
• Hoarding (ihtikar): al-Maraghi's definition and what he reports from Ibn Hajar al-Haytami and Abu Yusuf.
• Shirb (the right to water): another rule on what an owner of water may and may not refuse to others.