One bought a fallow field from the village land-records clerk, another from the deputy village headman: whose is the field?

Question

Question: One family bought a fallow (uncultivated) government field from the village land-records clerk, and the people of another family, out of enmity, bought it from the deputy of the village headman, because the headman himself had gone for Hajj. When the headman returned, he accepted the sale made by the family as valid and said that the field belongs to those who first bought it from the land-records clerk. Now there is a dispute over it: the first says it is his, and the second says it is his.

Answer

If that field was government property and the village land-records clerk had authority from the government to sell it without the village headman’s permission, then it became the property of the one who bought it from the clerk; and the purchase of the one who bought it afterwards from the headman’s deputy is not valid.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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