The Story of 3 Men and 8 Rotis

Two men went to 7-11. Man A bought 5 rotis and Man B bought 3 of the same roti. They went home and decided to share the 8 rotis with their other housemate, Man C. Being really, really good friends since their school days, they all ate the same portions of the 8 rotis....none had more or less than the other. After they were done, Man C offered to pay for his portions. Man A said, "tak payahlah......kita belanja you." Man B said, " same same here!" Despite his friends’ protests, Man C gave them RM8 anyhow. He stuffed the money into Man A's pocket. Man A took RM4 and gave the other RM4 to Man B. Man B said, "Aiyaa....too much laa, I only bought 3 rotis, you bought 5, you should take more. Let's divide this so that it shall be proportionate to what he had eaten from our rotis." How is this possible? The answer follows below, both men got whole ringgits (no coins), but it is not RM5 to Man A and RM3 to Man B. I have to admit, the above story was a re-hashed version of the actual event which took place about 1400 years ago. This story can be found in a book titled the Khalifas Who Took The Right Way. It is an English Translation of the original Arabic book titled Tarikh al Khulafa (the History of Khalifas) written by Imam Jalaluddin As-Suyuti, a 15th century scholar of Mazhab Shafi'e. It is a collection of narrations of the lifetime of all Khalifahs up to his time of writing that As-Suyuti collected from previous scholars . The English version only covers the first four Khalifahs (Abu Bakar, Umar, Uthman and Ali + his son Hasan, who was considered the Fifth Khalifah). In a a narration by Imam Tabarani (born 873- died 970), the event occured during Ali bin Abi Talib's time as Khalifah. It went like this......... Two men brought 5 + 3 breads. Then the third man shared the bread with them and paid them 8 dirhams. The man who bought 3 pieces of bread demanded an equal share but the man who bought 5 said he should have more because he had more breads to begin with. So both of them went to seek Ali's r.a. judgment as he was the Khalifah then. After deliberating, Ali made the decision that the man who bought 5 breads should be given 7 dirhams while the other should have only 1. The man who got 1 dirham protested and demanded explanation. So Ali explained his decision like this..... Since they all ate equal portions, this means for Bread #1 ; Man A ate one-third, Man B ate one-third and Man C also ate one-third. Everyone gets an equal part of each bread. The same process went for Bread #2 and so on..... So when they finished all the 8 breads, each person ate 8 parts. Total number of parts are 24 parts ( 8 breads x 3 parts for each bread = 24 parts!) Are you following me so far? Moving on..... Man A who had bought 5 breads, his parts were 5 x 3 = 15 parts Man B who bought 3 breads, his parts were 3 x 3 breads = 9 parts. 15 + 9 = 24. Man C no parts...because he did not buy anything. Therefore since Man A only ate 8, he had given 7 parts to Man C. Man B who originally had 9 parts, he also ate 8, which means he had given 1 part to Man C. So Man A should have 7 dirhams, and Man B only 1 dirham.