permit all of this. This is also the position of al-Layth, Ibn Abī Laylā, Abū Yūsuf, Muhammad, and hadith scholars such as Ahmad ibn Hanbal and others.

The misconception that led those scholars to prohibit these transactions was that they regarded them as contracts of hire, in which the amount of remuneration must be known. They then made an exception for profit-sharing investment partnerships on grounds of need, since money cannot be leased. The correct view, however, is that these transactions belong to the category of partnerships, not contracts of exchange. Someone who hires another seeks to obtain that person’s work, as when hiring a tailor, baker, cook, or the like. In these arrangements, however, the work itself is not the intended object. Rather, one party contributes his labor and the other the use of his property, so that they may share whatever profit Allah provides: either both gain or both sustain a loss. It was on this basis that:

“The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, contracted with the people of Khaybar to cultivate it at their own expense in return for half the fruit and crops it yielded.”

The prohibition of the form of agricultural leasing that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade in the hadith of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj and others is agreed upon, as al-Layth and others explained. For:

“He forbade leasing land in return for what grew along the irrigation channels and watercourses, together with some straw.”

One area might yield a crop while another did not. He therefore forbade the owner to reserve for himself the crop of a particular plot, just as, in a profit-sharing investment partnership, he forbade the working partner to stipulate a fixed amount of profit and the profit from a particular garment