a physical substance or a quality inhering in one has no bearing on permissibility, since both share the grounds that make the transaction permissible. Indeed, contracting for tangible things is even more deserving of permissibility, for physical substances are more complete than their attributes, and a contract concerning them can only be concluded in this manner. This principle is applied more extensively to hiring a wet nurse than to hiring an animal for suckling. A wet nurse may be hired for a specified wage, for her food and clothing, or with her food and clothing forming part of her wage.

As for livestock, when a contract is concluded for their milk in exchange for payment, the milk may be purchased with the owner remaining responsible for feeding and tending the animals, or with those responsibilities falling upon the purchaser. This second arrangement resembles contracting for the produce of orchards and is more akin to a lease. The milk is given to the infant to drink and is consumed as he benefits from it, just as someone leases a spring to irrigate his land with its water. This differs from the case of someone who takes delivery of the milk itself, since he thereby takes possession of the very thing contracted for. Calling one transaction a sale and the other a lease is merely a verbal dispute; what matters is their intended substance.

Some jurists, however, hold that differences in wording affect a contract’s validity or invalidity. Some even deem a contract valid when expressed in one form but not another. Thus, some say that a salam (advance-payment sale) contract stipulating immediate delivery is impermissible, yet permit it when concluded using the wording of a sale.

Others say that sharecropping is impermissible when the cultivator supplies the seed, yet permit the arrangement when concluded using the wording of a lease. This is the view of some jurists of Ahmad’s school. It is a weak position, for what matters