for dinars and dirhams. Even if the prohibition were not confined to its occasion but were understood generally as applying to everything other than dinars and dirhams, which are expressly excluded by the text, goods not produced by the land would likewise be excluded by analogy with dinars and dirhams. For analogy may validly be drawn from a specific exception to restrict a general ruling. An example is the saying of Allah, Mighty and Majestic:
“Flog the woman and the man guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse, each with a hundred lashes.” [Al-Nūr: 2]
This applied generally to every man and woman guilty of unlawful sexual intercourse, whether free or enslaved. Slave women were then excepted by His saying, Mighty and Majestic:
“Once they are married, if they commit an indecency, their punishment shall be half that of free women.” [Al-Nisā’: 25]
Male slaves were then excepted by analogy with slave women, on account of their shared condition of slavery. The same reasoning applies to our question. The Prophet’s prohibition against leasing farmland, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, is general. Leasing for dinars and dirhams is excepted by the explicit text; leasing for goods not produced by the land is then excepted by analogy with dinars and dirhams, on account of their shared underlying rationale: leasing for specified goods not produced by the land is leasing for a known payment, involving neither uncertainty nor muzābana, muhāqala, or mukhābara. It is therefore permissible by analogy with leasing for dinars and dirhams.
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Mālik’s position on leasing land, may Allah have mercy on him, is thus the soundest of the scholarly opinions on this matter. He gave effect to the hadiths reported from the Prophet, peace be upon him, on this subject, without treating any of them as contradictory. Rather, he read them in conjunction with one another, allowing some to explain others, and discarded none of them. Scholars consider giving effect to transmitted reports preferable to discarding them whenever this is possible and a way can be found to do so.