Book of Partnership

First Pillar: The Capital in an Inan Partnership

Our study of partnership will address its various categories and the pillars whose presence determines its legal validity. In each chapter we shall cite both the points of consensus and the well-known areas of disagreement among the jurists, in keeping with the purpose of this work.

According to the jurists of the different regions, partnership is of four kinds:

1. Inan partnership,
2. Partnership of labour (abdān),
3. Mufāwadah partnership, and
4. Wujūh partnership.

Only one of these enjoys unanimous acceptance, namely the inan partnership—even though some scholars were unfamiliar with this specific term and although they differ over certain of its conditions, as will be mentioned later. The remaining three are disputed, and even those who allow them differ over some of their conditions.

Discussion of the Inan Partnership

This partnership rests on three pillars:

1. The type of capital contributed to it;
2. The proportion of profit vis-à-vis the joint capital; and
3. The proportion of labour each partner is to provide in relation to the capital.

The First Pillar: The Capital

With respect to the capital, some matters are agreed upon and others are contested.

All Muslims agree that partnership is permissible when the capital is a single fungible kind—specifically gold dinars or silver dirhams. In essence such a partnership resembles a sale in which immediate hand-to-hand exchange does not occur, even though immediacy is a condition in the sale of gold or silver. Consensus, however, has exempted partnership from that requirement.

So far as I know, the jurists also agree that partnership is valid when the two non-monetary commodities contributed are of the same description. They differ, however, about a partnership formed with two dissimilar commodities or with heterogeneous assets—for example, when one partner contributes dinars and the other dirhams, or when the capital consists of a ribā-liable foodstuff belonging to the same genus.

This brings us to three issues.

Issue One

If the partners combine two different kinds of commodity, or one contributes commodities while the other supplies dirhams or dinars, Ibn al-Qāsim considered the partnership valid, and this is also the position of Mālik. Some, however, report that Mālik regarded it as disliked.

The reason for that dislike is that such a case melds partnership with sale: the two commodities are dissimilar, so it is as though each partner has sold part of his commodity for part of the other’s.

When partnership involves commodities, Mālik looks to their respective market values.

Al-Shāfiʿī, on the other hand, maintains that partnership is valid only when the capital consists of money, i.e., the price equivalent of commodities. Abū Ḥāmid reports that the outward purport of his school