appointed a man from the tribe of al-Azd, known as Ibn al-Lutbiyyah, to collect the zakāt. When he returned he presented his accounts, saying, “This is for you, and this was given to me as a gift.” The Prophet ﷺ said: “What is the matter with a man whom we place in authority over an affair that Allah has entrusted to us, and he comes back saying, ‘This is for you and this was presented to me as a gift’? Why did he not stay in the house of his father and mother and see whether any gifts would come to him or not? By Him in Whose hand is my soul, no one whom we appoint over any task of that which Allah has placed in our charge and who withholds anything from it will come on the Day of Resurrection carrying it on his neck: if it is a camel, it will be groaning; if a cow, lowing; and if a sheep, bleating.1” He then raised his hands toward the sky and said, “O Allah, have I conveyed? O Allah, have I conveyed?”—he said it two or three times.2

The point here is that whenever these duties, which are communal obligations, are not undertaken by others they become an individual obligation upon the person—especially if others are unable to perform them. Thus, when people need certain individuals to farm, weave, or build, that work becomes mandatory, and the ruler may compel them to do it, granting them the usual wage. They are not allowed to demand more than the going rate, nor may people wrong them by paying less. Likewise, if troops assigned to jihad need their land cultivated, those whose occupation is farming are required to cultivate it for them; and just as the farmer is obliged to farm for the troops, the troops are obliged not to oppress the farmer.

Sharecropping (muzāraʿah) is permissible according to the soundest of the two scholarly opinions. It was the practice of the Muslims during the lifetime of their Prophet and during the era of his Rightly Guided Successors; it remained the practice of the households of Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī, and the other families of the Emigrants. It is also the view of the leading Companions, such as Ibn Masʿūd, and it is the school of the hadith jurists—including Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, Isḥāq ibn Rāhawayh, Dāʾūd ibn ʿAlī, al-Bukhārī, Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq ibn Khuzaymah, Abū Bakr ibn al-Mundhir, and other jurists of Islam.3

The Prophet ﷺ had contracted with the people of Khaybar that they would receive half of what it produced in fruit and grain, and that arrangement remained in force until ʿUmar expelled them from Khaybar; and he had stipulated that