—is something that, once examined by anyone versed in what is lawful and unlawful, is self-evidently forbidden.

Ibn al-Qayyim said: Whoever reflects on the ḥadith of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj, gathers its various chains, compares them, and interprets what is general by means of what is explicit and what is unrestricted by means of what is restricted, will realise that what the Prophet ﷺ prohibited is a manifestly corrupt practice—namely, an oppressive and unjust form of share-cropping. Rāfiʿ himself said, “We used to lease the land on the basis that this plot would be ours and that plot theirs; sometimes this one produced and that one did not.”

In another wording he said: “In the Prophet’s time people would lease land for what grew along the madhiyānāt and the fronts of the canals, and for certain patches of the crop. One portion might perish while another survived, or this one survive and that perish; people had no other form of rent than this, and for that reason he forbade it. But where the share is definite and guaranteed, there is no harm.”

This is among the clearest and most explicit parts of Rāfiʿ’s report; any passage in it that is general, absolute, or abridged must be understood in the light of this clarified explanation upon which both wording and ruling are agreed. Thus end his words—may Allah have mercy upon him.

Al-Ṭayyibī, in his commentary on al-Mishkāt, said: The ḥadiths that appear to prohibit share-cropping seem at first sight to diverge and conflict. In brief, their reconciliation is that Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj heard several distinct reports on the prohibition and wove them into a single narrative. For this reason he sometimes says, “I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ,” at other times, “My uncles narrated to me,” and yet at others, “Both my uncles informed me.” In some of these reports the reason for the prohibition is that they inserted invalid conditions; in others, that they would quarrel over the rent; and in still others, that he feared they would become so engrossed in tillage that they would abandon jihād.

It is in this sense that one must understand the ‘confusion’ attributed to Imām Aḥmad—certainly not the technical confusion recognised by ḥadith specialists, for that constitutes a form of weakness, and it is inconceivable that the authors of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, al-Bukhārī and Muslim, would include anything of that sort.