the earlier Kufan scholars prohibited this. If, however, both items are genuinely intended—as when one mudd of ‘ajwa dates and one dirham are exchanged for one mudd of ‘ajwa dates and one dirham, or for two mudds of dates, or for two dirhams—two positions are reported from Ahmad. Mālik and al-Shāfi‘ī prohibit this, whereas Abū Hanīfah permits it. This is a matter open to scholarly judgment.

If what is intended on one side of the exchange is something other than the commodity subject to the rules of ribā—as when a sheep bearing wool or producing milk is sold for wool or milk—the better-known of the two positions reported from Ahmad permits it.

The second category of stratagems involves attaching a contract that is not genuinely intended to the prohibited contract. For example, the parties may agree that one will sell the other gold in exchange for the latter’s beads, which are then bought back for a greater amount of gold. Alternatively, they may arrange with a third party for one of them to sell some merchandise; the purchaser then sells it to the ribā dealer with whom he does business, and the dealer then sells it to his counterpart. This is the three-party stratagem.

Another example is to combine a loan with preferential terms in a sale, lease, musāqāh (tending trees for a share of their fruit), or a similar transaction. For instance, someone might lend another a thousand and sell him an item worth ten for two hundred, or rent him a house whose rental value is thirty for five, and so forth.

These and similar stratagems do not eliminate the harm on account of which Allah prohibited ribā. It is authentically established from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, in the hadith narrated by ‘Abd Allāh ibn ‘Amr, that he said:

“It is not lawful to combine a loan with a sale, nor to stipulate two conditions in a sale, nor