We shall now illustrate this with examples mentioned in the question. Those who said that profit-sharing investment partnerships, orchard-tending partnerships, and sharecropping agreements run contrary to analogy assumed that these contracts belong to the category of hire contracts, since they involve work in return for compensation. Hire contracts require both the compensation and the work provided in return to be known. When they saw that the work involved in these contracts was unspecified and the profit unknown, they said that they ran contrary to analogy. This was their mistake: these contracts belong to the category of partnerships, not exchange contracts in the strict sense, which require both countervalues to be known. Partnerships constitute a different category from exchange contracts, even if they are said to contain an element of exchange.

Likewise, partition constitutes a different category from exchange contracts in the strict sense, although it contains an element of exchange—so much so that some jurists have considered it a sale subject to the conditions governing sales in the strict sense.

To clarify this: work undertaken for financial gain falls into three types.

The first is where the work itself is the object of the contract, is clearly specified, and can be performed as agreed. This is a binding hire contract.

The second is where the work itself is the object of the contract, but is unspecified or uncertain. This is a reward contract, which is revocable, not binding. If someone says, “Whoever brings back my runaway slave shall have a hundred,” the person undertaking the task may or may not be able to bring him back. He may bring him back from somewhere nearby, or he may