of dates and barley.’ He said, ‘Do not do that. Cultivate them yourselves, let others cultivate them, or retain them.’”

He thus expressly stated that the prohibition concerned what they had been doing. Sharecropping proper, however, was not encompassed by the prohibition, nor did Rāfi or anyone else mention it among the permissible forms of leasing. This was because—Allah knows best—they regarded it as a different category from customary leasing. Leasing denotes an arrangement in which a specified rent becomes due, whether as determinate property or as a debt. If it is a guaranteed debt owed as a personal liability, it is permissible. The same applies if it consists of determinate property other than the crop. If, however, it consists of specific produce from the crop, it is not permissible.

As for sharecropping in return for an undivided share of the entire crop, it is not leasing in the unqualified sense; rather, it is a partnership pure and simple. There is no more reason to regard the cultivator as leasing the land in return for one share of the crop than to regard the owner as hiring the cultivator in return for the other share. Although some people also call this leasing, it is leasing only in the broad sense previously explained. It is not leasing in the specific sense in which Rāfi and others used the term. For this reason, Rāfi explained one of the two permissible forms of leasing, and he also explained the type they had been forbidden, but he did not address partnership because it belongs to a different category.

One question remains. The Prophet’s statement (may Allah bless him and grant him peace), “Whoever owns land should cultivate it or grant its use to his brother; otherwise, he should retain it,” commands a person to retain his land if he neither cultivates it nor grants its use to another. As stated above, this would entail a prohibition of both leasing and sharecropping.

The answer is that this is a command of recommendation and encouragement, not one of obligation. Alternatively, it may initially have been obligatory in order to deter them from the invalid form of leasing to which they had become accustomed. This is comparable to when he (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) prohibited them from eating the meat of domesticated donkeys and said concerning the vessels