who said: My father narrated to us: Saīd narrated to us, from Jabala, who heard Ibn Umar say, “Fixed-return leases are usury.”

The reply is that, in transactions where deferment is permissible, usury can arise only when the two countervalues are of the same kind and one exceeds the other. Thus, if rent, a sale price, or anything similar is said to be usurious despite its being permissible to defer it, this is because it constitutes an exchange of unequal amounts of the same kind. Usury is either usury of deferment, which [does not arise in transactions for which] deferment is permissible, or usury of excess, which arises only when both countervalues are of the same kind. Once usury of deferment—which consists in delay—is excluded, only usury of excess remains, namely an increase within the same kind.

This occurs when the fixed-return lease is contracted for produce of the same kind as the land’s yield—for example, when someone takes over land containing date palms [in return for dates]. This resembles the sale of date palms for a measured quantity of dates. It is also analogous to leasing land in return for produce of the same kind as that which it yields, when the stipulated payment is owed as a fixed liability—for example, leasing land on which to grow wheat in return for a specified quantity of wheat. There are two reported positions from Ahmad concerning this. The first is that it is usury, as Mālik held. This is like the fixed-return lease that Ibn Umar disapproved, because the person took over wheat-producing land in return for wheat [of a specified amount; it was thus as though he had bought wheat in exchange for wheat], with the resulting wheat being greater or less in amount, thereby making the usury manifest.

The fixed-return leases that Ibn Umar described as usury are those in which someone takes over land containing date palms and cultivators for a fixed return consisting of the same kind as its yield. For example, a man may own a village containing trees and farmland, with cultivators working it. After the cultivators’ wages or shares have been deducted, it produces for him whatever wheat and dates it produces. Another man then takes it over from him in return for a specified quantity of wheat, dates, or the like. This makes clear why it is described as usury. As for taking over land in return for dirhams and dinars, that does not fall under the category of