My father passed away nearly one year ago from cancer. Before dying, he had promised to sell the farmer who works on our land a small piece of land (on our land) for him to build a home on for his children. The farmer and his family currently live in a home we have built for whoever is working on the farm, but it is NOT theirs. The land promised by my father would have been sold to the farmer. We took 5000 EGP as a deposit for the land before my father died. My father had told us (& not the farmer) that his intentions were not to take any more money for the land in question (worth between 25-35 thousand pounds) Now, our experience with ALL the farmers we have had over the years has been very negative. Many of them had stolen from us for years. This farmer is better than other we've had, but as with most Egyptian farmers, they are not straight and cannot be trusted to do their work consciously, honestly, and with diligence. We have our problems with him as well. My mother now runs the farm and is very concerned with my father's wishes before his death - as we are very reluctant to give the farmer the land promised and have to be stuck with him and his family forever being our neighbors if we do so. What if they abuse our trust, or we catch them stealing? We will then be stuck with the whole family as our neighbors forever...and it will make it hard to control things in the farm and to secure it as they would be living in it!! Is it possible (so that we avoid breaking my father's promise before his death) that we just evaluate the value of the land promised and ask the farmer to instead buy a nearby plot to secure his kid's future...rather than give them the plot in question? We do not want to break my father's promise or upset God but at the same time are very fearful of giving the farmer the plot and getting stuck with him and his family forever on our land which my father struggled for so long to bring to its current state.

All perfect praise be to Allaah, The Lord of the Worlds. I testify that there is none worthy of worship except Allaah, and that Muhammad is His slave and Messenger.

What is understood from the question is that your father really sold the land which he had promised to the farmer and that you received part of its price. Therefore, if the situation is as you mentioned in the question, then the land had become the property of the farmer and there is no way of getting him out of it. Hence, it is not a matter of fulfilling or not fulfilling the promise, since the land had become his and no longer become your father’s. What should be looked at now is the remaining amount from the price of the land. If your father had exempted him in his life while he was not so sick that it was feared that he would die because of his sickness, then the farmer is exempted from the remaining amount. Indeed, the jurists stated that whoever acquits his debtor from his debts even before it is due, with the wording of ‘you are free from this debt’ or ‘this is a charity for you’ or ‘this is a gift for you’ and other expressions that mean renouncing the debts from him, or abandoning it, or making it possessed by him, or forgiving it for him, then the debtor becomes acquitted. Therefore, you have no right to ask the farmer to pay the remaining amount.

However, if your father did not acquit him from it, but he just promised that he will renounce it in the future, then the farmer is obliged to pay that amount of money and you have the right to take it.

Nonetheless, there is a last probability, which is that if your father had acquitted the farmer during his death sickness, or that he had conditioned acquitting him from the money on his (your father’s) death, then this kind of acquitting takes the ruling of a will, in which case the farmer is acquitted from the money if it is worth a third of the inheritance or less than a third, but if it is more than a third, then the farmer can only be acquitted from what equals the third.

Allaah Knows best.