and one dirham, or for two mudds of dates or two dirhams. Ahmad has two reported positions on this. Prohibition is the position of Mālik and al-Shāfiī, while permissibility is that of Abū Hanīfa. This is a matter open to juristic reasoning.
When the intended item on one side is other than the commodity governed by the rules of usury—as when a sheep bearing wool or milk is sold for wool or milk—the better-known of the two reported positions from Ahmad is that it is permissible.
The second category of stratagems is to couple the prohibited contract with another contract that is not intended in itself. For example, the parties may agree that one will sell the other gold in exchange for his beads and then buy the beads back from him for a greater amount of gold. Alternatively, they may arrange with a third party for one of them to sell a commodity, after which the buyer sells it to the usurer with whom he is dealing, and the usurer then sells it back to its original owner. This is the tripartite stratagem. Another example is to couple a loan with preferential terms in a sale, lease, orchard-tending arrangement, or the like—such as lending someone one thousand while selling him an item worth ten for two hundred, or renting him a house whose rent is worth thirty for five, and similar arrangements.
Stratagems such as these do not remove the harm on account of which Allah prohibited usury. It is authentically reported from the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, in the hadith of Abd Allāh ibn Amr, that he said: “A loan and a sale may not be combined; nor may two conditions be imposed in one sale; nor may profit be taken from that for which liability has not been assumed; nor may one sell what one does not possess.” Al-Tirmidhī said: “This is a sound and authentic hadith.” It belongs to the same category as the stratagems of the Jews, for they resorted to stratagems to deem usury lawful and called it al-mashkand. Allah cursed them for doing so.
Ibn Batta narrated with a sound chain from Abū Hurayra—may Allah be pleased with him—that the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “Do not commit what the Jews committed, thereby deeming Allah’s prohibitions lawful