Repaying a wife's gold sold at her husband's request: by weight or by value?

A question from a wife whose dower gold was sold for her husband's needs and for building the house with a promise of return, after which its price multiplied, in which the fatwa centre of IslamWeb answered that gold the husband borrowed in kind is repaid in kind, not by value; money lent as cash is repaid as cash; the engagement gift is the wife's property and so a debt like the rest of the gold; and the cost of her treatment is a matter of disagreement, with the view that it is obligatory well founded. ¹

The questioner said she married fourteen years ago with a dower fixed in dinars, that the custom in her country is to buy gold for the wife with that sum, and that this was done; her husband later asked her to sell some of her gold for a particular need, promising to return it, and years passed without his doing so, and she sold the rest of the gold of her own accord to finish building their house on the agreement that he would return that too. The value of the gold has changed and its price has multiplied, so she asked whether she recovers the dower's value in dinars or the value of the gold; whether the engagement gift counts as part of the dower and whether she may recover it, since she needs the money for treatment; and whether the husband must bear the cost of her treatment or whether that is a matter of generosity. ¹

The centre answered that if in both cases the husband in fact borrowed the gold itself from her and then had it sold to meet the need, the gold is a debt he owes, and it makes no difference that she handed him its price, since she acted as his agent in selling it; he must return its like, not its value, regardless of whether its price rose or fell over the years. It cited the resolution of the Islamic Fiqh Academy at its session in Kuwait in December 1988 that debts fixed in a given currency are settled in kind, not by value, because debts are repaid with their like; unless the two agree on payment of its value, in which case there is no harm, and it is assessed on the day of payment rather than the day of the loan, according to the hadith of Abdullah ibn Umar in the Musnad of Ahmad that there is no harm in taking it at the day's rate so long as the two do not part with anything outstanding between them. ¹ It said the dinars in which the dower was named are irrelevant, since they were exchanged for gold that became her property to dispose of as she wished, and the husband's dealing with it was by way of borrowing and return. ¹

If instead she herself sold the gold and then gave him the price in cash on condition that he return it to her, she did not lend him gold but a sum of money, so the debt he owes is the cash he took on the day of the sale, with no regard to its value in gold or to the difference between its value at the time of the loan and now; the centre quoted the Fiqh Encyclopaedia that a debt consisting of a named gold or silver coin that rises or falls in value by the time of payment does not oblige the debtor to pay anything else, since it is money by nature. ¹ As for the engagement gift (shabka), it said that whether it is regarded by custom as part of the dower or as an independent gift, it becomes the wife's full and exclusive property once the marriage is contracted and consummated, and the husband may not take it without her consent; if it was sold for the husband's need or for the building with a promise of return, it is a debt like the rest of the gold that she is entitled in sharia to claim. ¹ On the husband's bearing the cost of his wife's medical treatment, it noted a difference of opinion among scholars which it had set out in its fatwa 166893, where it said that the view holding this obligatory on the husband is of evident weight in this age. ¹

The fatwa centre of IslamWeb published this fatwa on islamweb.net as no. 539349, dated 17 Jumada al-Ula 1448, 28 October 2026. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.