A Critical Review of the Theories on the Definition of Real Estate in Islamic Law

Jurists have presented various theories on the definition of real estate. The numerousness of these theories has led to the ambiguity of the legal concept of real estate; for, all these theories cannot be conformed to the Islamic law due to their contradiction with one another and preferring one over the others requires proving; whereas, the jurists have not presented sufficient legal proofs to prove and conform their theory to the Islamic Law. Unfortunately, no independent investigation including the proposing, examining, and evaluating all these theories has been carried out on this issue, which has created a scholarly gap in research in this respect. Therefore, it is necessary for the researchers to study and elucidate this issue so as to remove the above-mentioned ambiguity and to achieve a theory consistent with Islamic law in definition of real estate. The necessity of doing research on this issue would become more evident when we know that the definition of real estate according to any theory would be followed by specific legal effects. Thus, the present research seeks to set forth the legal definition of real estate according to the existing theories of the jurists and, through critically reviewing them, to obtain and elucidate the research theory according to the Islamic law in legal definition of real estate. This is regarded as the most important finding of the research.