labor, as well as those who acquire spoils sharing in them, and countless similar cases. Admittedly, if one of the two were to work in return for compensation guaranteed to him by the other, rather than for something generated by his work, this would be a contract of hire.

The second line of reasoning is that these arrangements belong to the same category as a profit-sharing partnership. The asset increases through labor performed upon it, so it is permissible to work it in return for part of its increase, just as with dirhams and dinars. All jurists have deemed profit-sharing partnerships permissible, following what has been reported concerning them from the Companions—may Allah be pleased with them—even though no specific sunnah from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—is known concerning them. Ahmad held that profit-sharing partnerships should be analogized to orchard-tending and sharecropping arrangements, since their permissibility is established by explicit text; they may therefore serve as an original precedent to which other cases are analogized, despite the dissenting views concerning them. Analogizing either category to the other is sound: whoever accepts the permissibility of one may apply the ruling of the other to it, since the two are equivalent.

If it is objected, “In a profit-sharing partnership, the profit does not come from the corpus of the original capital. Rather, the original capital passes away and is replaced by something else. Thus, the wealth ultimately divided is generated by the labor itself, unlike fruit and crops, which issue from the original asset.”

The response is: “This is merely a difference in outward form and has no legal effect. We know necessarily that the wealth acquired results only from the combined benefit of the worker’s labor and the productive use of the capital. This is why the capital owner receives the equivalent of his original capital and the two then divide the profit, just as the worker retains his own person, which is the counterpart of the dirhams. Attributing the profit to this man’s bodily labor is no more warranted than attributing it to the productive use of the other man’s wealth.”

Thus, the profit-sharing arrangement that you report from Umar arose without a contract: Abū Mūsā al-Asharī lent Umar’s two sons money from the public treasury, and they carried it to their father. Umar then demanded the entire profit because he regarded this as