The Fungible and non-Fungible from the Perspective of Islamic Jurisprudence and the the Legal System of Iran

In financial relationships where one party becomes accountable for making a payment to the other party based on a contract such as debt or based on other issues such as usurpation, there are cases in which the object of liability is not determined or agreed on. In these cases, the ruling in Islamic jurisprudence and statute laws is liability against fungibles in case of fungible objects and liability for value in case of non-fungible objects. Obviously, the implementation of this rule depends on the identification of fungible and non-fungible properties. Even a bit misconception in interpreting these two concepts will lead to different referents in reality, which will cause differences in the rulings as well as adverse legal and economic consequences in society. Therefore, the present paper is an attempt to analyze and evaluate the concepts of fungible and non-fungible. Via a comparative approach and a descriptive-analytical method, the paper addresses these concepts in legal terms besides evaluating the different perspectives of Islamic jurists and scholars. Based on the findings of this study, a fungible property refers to an object whose instances and features are so close that do not cause reasonable individuals to have different tendencies and motivations towards its various instances or individuals. A non-fungible property is the reverse.