its expenses, so hiring for it is permitted, just like the building of mosques and bridges. The argument of the first narration is that 'Ubadah ibn al-Samit used to teach a man the Quran, so he gifted him a bow. He asked the Prophet (peace be upon him) about that, and he said to him: "If it pleases you to have a bow of fire hung around your neck, then hang it." (11) The Prophet (peace be upon him) also said to 'Uthman ibn Abi al-'As: "Appoint a caller to prayer who does not take a wage for his call." (12) Furthermore, it is an act of worship where the performer is specifically required to be one of those eligible for acts of piety, so it is not permitted to take a wage for it, like prayer and fasting. As for the hadiths regarding taking payment (ju'l) and a wage, they were specifically about Ruqya, which is a specific case, and thus limited to it. As for building mosques, it is not required for the performer to be of those eligible for acts of piety, and it is permissible for it to occur as an act of piety or otherwise; if it occurs for a wage, it is not an act of piety nor an act of worship. It is not valid (13) here for it to be other than an act of worship, and it is not permissible to have partnership in worship; so whenever he performs it for the sake of the wage, it ceases to be an act of worship, and thus it is not valid. It does not follow from the permissibility of taking expenses that taking a wage is permissible, as evidenced by the judiciary, testimony, and the Imamate, where sustenance is taken for them from the public treasury—which is in meaning an expense—but it is not permissible to take a wage for them. The benefit of the difference is that when it is not permissible to take a wage for it, he is nothing but a pure substitute, and what is given to him of money is an expense for his journey; so if he dies, is blocked from proceeding, falls ill, or loses his way, he is not liable for what he has spent. Ahmad stated this explicitly, because it is an expenditure with the permission of the owner of the money, so it is similar to if he had permitted him to plug a breach (14) in a dam, and it leaked and did not plug. When another substitutes for him, he shall perform Hajj from the point the substitute reached.