Kitab at-Tijarat and Kitab al-Ahkam

The commercial transactions and legal rulings sections of Sunan Ibn Majah address the practical economic and judicial dimensions of Islamic law with coverage that, while less comprehensive than Abu Dawud's treatment, includes several hadiths that are unique to Ibn Majah and that became important references in Islamic commercial and judicial jurisprudence.

Kitab at-Tijarat opens with the fundamental Islamic attitude toward commerce: the Prophet said that nine tenths of provision comes through trade, positioning commercial activity as one of the most natural and productive means by which believers sustain themselves and their families. This positive framing of commerce stands alongside the detailed prohibitions that follow — riba, gharar, fraud, false advertising — as evidence that Islam's commercial ethics are not anti-market but anti-exploitation.

The riba chapters in Ibn Majah include hadiths on both riba al-nasi'ah (riba in credit transactions, where an excess is charged for a deferred payment) and riba al-fadl (riba in spot exchange of like commodities at unequal rates). Among his most cited hadiths is the narration that riba has seventy-three doors, the lightest of which is equivalent to a man committing zina with his own mother — an arresting comparison that captures the tradition's view that riba is not merely financially harmful but spiritually catastrophic. This hadith, graded as authentic by some scholars and cited extensively in Islamic finance literature, is found primarily in Ibn Majah's collection.

The chapters on honest dealings in commerce preserve the hadith that the buyer and seller have the option (khiyar) to cancel the sale as long as they have not parted, and that if they are honest and transparent the transaction will be blessed, but if they conceal and lie the blessing of the sale will be destroyed. This hadith — present in the two Sahihs as well — appears in Ibn Majah with an additional chain that corroborates the version in al-Bukhari and Muslim.

Kitab al-Ahkam — the Book of Legal Rulings — covers judicial conduct, the taking of oaths, the evaluation of witnesses, and the obligations of rulers toward their subjects. The Prophet's statement that judges are of three types — one in Paradise (the one who knows the truth and judges by it) and two in the Fire (the one who judges in ignorance and the one who judges wrongly despite knowing the truth) — appears here as in Abu Dawud, and Ibn Majah's chain for it was used by scholars to corroborate the version in the other Sunan collections.

The chapters on testimony and witnesses address who is qualified to testify in legal proceedings, the prohibition of accepting the testimony of a known liar, and the procedures for oath-taking in disputed claims. Ibn Majah records the Prophet's instruction that the burden of proof is on the claimant and the oath is on the one who denies — a legal principle (al-bayyina ala al-mudda'i wal-yamin ala man ankara) that became a foundational maxim of Islamic procedural law, cited in every major fiqh manual.

The chapters on the obligations of rulers to their subjects and vice versa reflect the political ethics dimension of Ibn Majah's Sunan. The Prophet instructed the community to listen to and obey those in authority even if they are treated unjustly, as long as the command does not involve disobedience to Allah, and warned that obedience to leaders in sinful matters is not required. These hadiths, balanced between the obligation of social order and the priority of divine command, were cited extensively in classical Islamic political thought and continue to be relevant in discussions of political ethics in Muslim-majority societies.