is more deserving of being deemed permissible than sharecropping in which the seed is provided by the landowner. This is why the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, practised sharecropping in this manner. Likewise, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, contracted with the people of Khaybar for half of the fruit and crops produced there, on condition that they cultivate the land at their own expense.

Those who stipulated that the seed must come from the landowner drew an analogy with profit-sharing investment partnerships. They said: In such partnerships, the capital comes from one party and the labour from another; sharecropping should follow the same pattern. They therefore required the owner to provide the seed, just as he provides the land.

Besides contradicting the Sunnah and the statements of the Companions, this analogy is among the most unsound. In a profit-sharing investment partnership, the capital returns to its owner, and the two parties divide the profit. It therefore corresponds to the land in sharecropping. As for the seed, no equivalent of it is returned to its owner; rather, it is consumed, just as the benefit derived from the land is consumed. It is therefore more appropriate to liken it to the benefit that is consumed than to the underlying asset that remains.

When the contracting party supplies the seed, his labour and seed are expended, while the landowner’s contribution—the benefit derived from his land—is likewise expended. The seed supplied by the former thus corresponds to the land supplied by the latter. Anyone who treats the seed as analogous to capital should therefore require an equivalent amount of seed to be returned to its owner, just as he requires the capital to be returned in a profit-sharing investment partnership. Yet how can this analogy stand when, if the owner of the seed stipulated that an equivalent of his seed be returned to him, they would not permit it?