to Abū ʿAbd Allāh Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal: ‘What of a man who entrusts his land to a cultivator in return for one-third or one-quarter of the yield?’ He replied, ‘There is no harm in that, provided the landowner supplies the seed and the cultivator supplies the oxen, iron implements, and labor’—regarding the arrangement as analogous to a profit-sharing investment partnership.”

The basis for this is that the seed is the principal from which the crop grows, just as capital is the principal from which profit arises. The seed must therefore be supplied by the party providing the principal, so that one party contributes the labor and the other the principal.

According to a second report from him, this is not a condition; rather, the seed may be supplied by the worker. Indeed, the great majority of his associates—more than twenty of them—transmitted from him that a landowner may lease out his land in return for one-third or one-quarter of the yield, on the model of the Prophet’s arrangement (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) with the people of Khaybar.

Some of his associates—such as Qādī Abū Yaʿlā—said: If the owner turns his land over to someone who will work it using his own seed, in return for a share of the crop going to the owner, then it is permissible if structured as a lease, but impermissible if structured as muzāraʿah. They regarded this distinction as the proper way to construe his recorded rulings, because throughout those rulings they found a great many unequivocal statements permitting land to be leased in return for a share of its produce. They also understood his apparent position to be that muzāraʿah is not permissible [unless] the seed is supplied by the owner, as in a profit-sharing investment partnership. They therefore distinguished the legal category of muzāraʿah and profit-sharing investment partnerships, on the one hand, from that of leasing, on the other.

Others—including Abū al-Khattāb—said that by his statement in the report transmitted by the group, “Land may be leased in return for a portion of its produce,” he meant: