A Critical Study about the Worthiness of the Object of Contract from the Viewpoint of Jurisprudence of Islamic Denominations

Worthiness of the object of contract is one of the important issues in contract law. Analyzing this concept and its sanction is a place of disagreement in Shiite jurisprudence as well as Sunni jurisprudence. This article specifically seeks to find the answer to what the conventional verdict of worthlessness of the object of the contract is. Is the aforesaid contract invalid? In spite of the clear answer and the Shiite and Sunni jurists’ views about the invalidity of these contracts, this article shows that those contracts cannot be invalid in jurisprudence since first of all the criterion to identify whether the object of contract is worthy or not, is the object’s benefit, and there is no need to assume this benefit as an absolute and legal one. In other words, worthiness can be temporarily and accepted by the custom; so things that are legally worthless can be assumed to have worth. Secondly analyzing the traditions about the properties which are invalid in the jurists’ views says that these traditions cannot establish the invalidity of these contracts. Some of these traditions purely express the obligatory verdict of permanent prohibition and some of them accepted the conventional verdict validity. Just a few traditions are for the invalidity of these contracts. According to the rules, opposite traditions abolish each other and according to principles such as necessity of fulfillment of contracts, the validity of contract can be established.