nor profit from that for which one bears no liability, nor the sale of what one does not possess.” It was reported by the five Imams: Ahmad, Abū Dāwūd, al-Nasāī, al-Tirmidhī, and Ibn Mājah. Al-Tirmidhī graded it “a good and authentic hadith.” The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) thus forbade combining a loan with a sale. Combining a loan with a lease is likewise a combination of a loan and a sale, or its equivalent. Every gratuitous transfer coupled with a sale or lease—such as an outright gift, a loan for use, the grant of fruit still on a tree, or preferential terms in an orchard-sharing contract, a crop-sharing contract, a sale, or any other transaction—is equivalent to a loan.

The overall meaning of the hadith is that a transaction for consideration must not be combined with a gratuitous transfer. This is because the transfer was made only on account of the transaction for consideration, rather than being an unconditional gift, and thus becomes part of the consideration. If the two parties agree that it is not consideration, they have combined two mutually incompatible things. For if someone lends a man one thousand dirhams and sells him an item worth five hundred for one thousand, he would have agreed [to the loan] only in return for the inflated price of the item, while the buyer would have agreed to pay that inflated price only because of the thousand he borrowed. Thus, the first party has not truly made a sale for one thousand, nor has the other received a pure loan. In reality, he gave him the one thousand and the item in exchange for two thousand. This is the “mudd of Ajwa dates” issue. If the intended purpose is to receive one thousand in return for more than one thousand, it is unquestionably prohibited; otherwise, it falls under the well-known difference of opinion.

Likewise, if someone leases out land worth one hundred for one thousand and grants the lessee the fruit of the trees, or accepts only one part in a thousand of their fruit, it is necessarily evident that he granted the fruit gratuitously only because of the thousand he received, and that the lessee paid the thousand only for the fruit. Thus, the fruit constitutes most of