the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—and he asked, ‘What do you do with your fields?’ I replied, ‘We lease them, Messenger of Allah, for [one quarter] of the yield, or for a number of wasqs of dates or barley.’ He said, ‘Do not do that. Cultivate them yourselves, let others cultivate them, or retain them.’” Rāfiʿ said, “I replied, ‘I hear and obey.’” Both al-Bukhārī and Muslim related it in their Sahih collections.

Abū Hurayra reported that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “Whoever owns land should cultivate it or grant its use to his brother. If he refuses, he should retain his land.” Both related it.

Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh reported: “They used to cultivate the land for one-third or one-quarter of its yield. The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—then said, ‘Whoever owns land should cultivate it or grant its use to his brother. If he does neither, he should retain his land.’” Both related it; this is al-Bukhārī’s wording.

Muslim’s wording is: “During the time of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—we used to take land in return for one-third or one-quarter of the yield, together with what grew along the main irrigation canals. The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—then stood up to address the matter and said, ‘Whoever owns land should cultivate it. If he does not cultivate it, he should grant its use to his brother; and if he does not grant its use to his brother, he should retain it.’” Another version in the Sahih adds, “And he must not lease it.” Another version in the Sahih states, “He prohibited leasing land.”

It is also established in both Sahih collections that Jābir said, “The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—forbade the sale of standing crops for grain, the sale of dates on the palms for measured dried dates, advance sales of fruit for successive years, and sharecropping for a portion of the yield.” In another version found in both Sahih collections, Zayd ibn Abī Unaysa related from ʿAtā, from Jābir, that “the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—forbade the sale of standing crops for grain, the sale of dates on the palms for measured dried dates, sharecropping for a portion of the yield, and the purchase of fruit on date palms before it began to color. ‘Beginning to color’ means turning red or yellow, or some of it becoming fit to eat,