Ibn al-Qāsim in the section entitled “Houses and Farms” in Yahyā’s transmitted reports in the Book of Task-Based Rewards and Hiring. Advance payment is permissible in this type of hire, because loss is rare and is therefore disregarded.

The fifth type is hiring someone to build a house on a particular site or dig a well there, under a binding contract for his personal services, without making the work an obligation chargeable against him and his property. If another party establishes title to the site, or it becomes affected by seepage, the hire is terminated. If he completes the building, he is entitled to his fee even if it subsequently collapses, because the hirer takes possession of it upon completion. There is disagreement, however, if it collapses before completion. Sahnūn said that he is entitled to nothing until the work is complete. Ibn al-Qāsim said that he receives a proportion of the fee corresponding to the work performed, except where the hire concerns land that is not owned. On that case, his statements in al-Mudawwana differ: on one occasion he said that the worker receives payment proportionate to his work; on another, that he receives nothing until the work is complete, as with a task-based reward. These are the rulings governing permissible hire.

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Disliked hire comprises contracts whose validity is subject to conflicting evidence despite their being free of uncertainty and risk, such as hiring someone to perform prayer or Hajj, or a Muslim hiring himself out to a non-Muslim under Muslim protection. It also includes contracts involving uncertainty and risk where it is unclear whether these are slight enough to be disregarded or too substantial to be overlooked. The ruling is that such a contract must be rescinded before it passes beyond the point of rescission; once it has passed that point, it stands at the stipulated fee. Some such contracts pass beyond rescission upon their conclusion, while others do so only once the work has been fully performed, depending on the degree of disapproval attaching to them.

There are also hiring contracts concerning which the school’s jurists disagree as to whether they are disliked or invalid and prohibited. An example is the case in the section entitled “He Was Caught Drinking Wine” in Ibn al-Qāsim’s transmitted reports in the Book of Task-Based Rewards and Hiring. Its wording is as follows:

He related: “Mālik—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—was asked about a man who contracted with another to excavate a spring over a distance of five thousand cubits, on condition that any rock encountered in the ground would have to be broken through by the owner of the spring. The worker began excavating and encountered about a hundred cubits of rock in the ground, which were broken through by