The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, "When two parties make a transaction, each of them has the option to cancel it as long as they have not yet parted, unless it was a sale with a stipulated option."
أن رسول الله ﷺ قال: المتبايعان كل واحد منهما بالخيار على صاحبه ما لم يتفرقا إلا بيع الخيار.
Malik narrated it in the chapter on Sales (79) from Nafi, from Abdullah bin Umar, and related it. Bukhari narrated it in the chapter on Sales (2111), and Muslim in the chapter on Sales (1531:43), both of them by the route of Malik, with the same wording. Malik said, "We have no known limit for this, nor any established practice regarding it."Malik's statement after narrating the hadith, "We have no known limit for this, nor any established practice regarding it," puzzled the scholars. Ibn Abdul-Barr said, "The scholars agree that this hadith is firmly established from the Prophet ﷺ, and that it is among the most firmly established reports transmitted by reliable individual narrators." The Malikis then differed over Malik's rejection of this hadith. Most of them held that it contradicts what the people of Madinah practiced.Ibn Abdul-Barr was not satisfied with this interpretation, and said, "The claim of a consensus among the people of Madinah on this matter is not valid, because Saeed bin Musayab and Ibn Shihab, who are among the greatest jurists of the people of Madinah, are reported to have explicitly acted upon it, and no one among the people of Madinah is reported explicitly to have abandoned acting upon it except Malik and Rabia." End of quote.Ibn Arabi said in his commentary on Tirmidhi (2/845), "Malik's statement, 'We have no known limit for this, nor any established practice regarding it,' points to the fact that the session is of unknown duration, and if the option were stipulated for an unknown duration it would be invalid by consensus. How then can a ruling be established in the law by means of something that would not be permissible as a stipulated condition in the law? This is something that only someone like Malik would grasp, so the ignorant among our companions who pass themselves off as scholars imagined that Malik based his position merely on the practice of the people of Madinah, which is sheer foolishness." End of quote.Ibn Abdul-Barr mentioned another interpretation, more correct than this one, which is that it contains a rejection of the view of the people of Iraq and others, who held that the option applies to all goods for only three days, whereas according to Malik and the people of Madinah the option lasts three days, or more, or less, depending on the nature of the item sold. For them, the option for livestock is not the same as for garments, nor is the option for garments the same as for real estate, and none of this has a fixed limit in Madinah that may not be exceeded, as the opponent claimed. End of quote.For more, see Minna Kubra (5/19–23).Bukhari added, in his version (2107), by the narration of Yahya bin Saeed Ansari from Nafi, that he said, "Ibn Umar, when he bought something that pleased him, would part from the seller."Bukhari narrated it in the chapter on Sales (2113), and Muslim in the chapter on Sales (1531:46), both of them by the route of Abdullah bin Dinar, from Ibn Umar, with the wording, "Any two parties to a sale have no binding transaction between them until they part, except in a sale with an option."