For this reason, it is not permissible to stipulate a fixed amount of the returns for either party, whether in capital-and-labor partnerships, orchard sharecropping, or crop sharecropping, because this is contrary to justice: one party might receive something while the other receives nothing. This is what the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited in the hadiths reporting “that he forbade mukhābara (sharecropping),” “leasing land,” or “crop sharecropping,” such as the hadith of Rāfi‘ ibn Khadīj and others. These reports explain that people used to cultivate land on condition that the produce of a particular plot belonged to the owner.

For this reason, al-Layth ibn Sa‘d said: “The arrangement of this kind that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited is one that anyone knowledgeable about the lawful and unlawful would, upon examining it, recognize as impermissible.”

Crop sharecropping, however, is undoubtedly permissible, whether the seed comes from the owner, the cultivator, or both, and whether the contract is expressed in terms of leasing, crop sharecropping, or otherwise. This is the soundest position on this issue. The same applies to all arrangements of this kind, such as entrusting one’s animal or boat to someone who earns with it, with the profit shared between them; or entrusting one’s livestock or date palms to someone who tends them, with the wool, milk, offspring, and honey shared between them.

Once these two views on crop sharecropping are understood, those scholars who hold that