• Aqbāl al-jadāwil: the word begins with a hamzah carrying fatḥah, followed by qāf and then a single-dotted bāʾ. The plural aqbāl denotes the first stretches or heads of small water-courses—the minor irrigation channels that are dug into the earth.
• Zajara ʿanhu: zajara, yazjuru, zajran—to restrain someone from something; to forbid it emphatically.

What is learned from the ḥadith:

1. The report differentiates a valid lease of farmland from an invalid one. The invalid lease is the pre-Islamic arrangement in which the owner is granted whatever grows along the channels and ditches or is allotted a particular side of the crop. Such a lease is void because it involves uncertainty, risk, and ignorance of the outcome—this portion may thrive while that one perishes.
2. This very type of lease, surrounded by uncertainty, risk, and ignorance, is prohibited and does not take legal effect; it is what the Prophet ﷺ forbade. By contrast, a lease for a fixed, known payment is sound.
3. Taken generally, the ḥadith allows rent to be paid in gold, silver, or any currency that has replaced them, and it also permits payment even when the rent is of the same kind as the land’s produce or the very produce itself.
4. The text forbids inserting corrupt conditions into a lease—such as stipulating a particular side of the crop for one party, or reserving what lies along the waterways for either the landowner or the cultivator. This is an invalid form of share-cropping (muzāraʿah) because of its uncertainty and risk.
5. Every contract marred by excessive uncertainty, ignorance of the outcome, or gambling-like risk is unlawful and void, for it amounts to a form of games of chance (maysir). It wrongs one of the parties and breeds enmity and rancor, whereas the Sacred Law seeks to establish justice and equality while fostering love, affection, and mutual harmony.
6. The majority of scholars—including the three Imams—permit leasing agricultural land for gold, silver, merchandise, or food, provided the food is not drawn from that land itself. Imam Mālik, however, prohibits leasing it for food in all circumstances, whether the food comes from the land or from elsewhere, citing the ḥadith: “Do not lease it for food.”