establishing for the new case the opposite of the ruling governing the original case, because the effective cause underlying the original ruling is absent.

Thus, it may be argued that the reason requiring the rent to be specified is absent in sharecropping and similar arrangements. That requirement rests on the fact that an unspecified consideration involves uncertainty, making the transaction akin to a sale involving uncertainty that entails consuming wealth wrongfully, or on other reasons of this kind. These considerations are absent in the new case. If the only ground for prohibition is a particular factor, and that factor is absent, there is no prohibition.

As for the hadiths—the report of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj and others—they explain and clarify the Prophet’s prohibition, peace and blessings be upon him. He was not prohibiting what he himself practised, or what the Companions practised during his lifetime and afterwards. Rather, what he permitted was different from what he prohibited.

Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj said:

“We cultivated more land than anyone else in Medina. We used to lease land in return for the produce of a designated portion reserved for the landowner.” He said: “Sometimes that portion would be damaged while the rest of the land was spared, and sometimes the rest of the land would be damaged while that portion was spared. So we were forbidden to do this. As for gold and silver, leasing land for them was not practised at that time.”

Al-Bukhārī narrated this. In another version he narrated, Rāfiʿ said:

“We had more farmland than anyone else in Medina. One of us would lease his land, saying: ‘This plot is mine, and that one is yours.’ Sometimes one would yield a crop while the other yielded nothing. So the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, forbade them to do this.”

In another version he narrated:

“Sometimes this plot would yield such-and-such an amount while the other yielded nothing. So we were forbidden to do that, but we were not forbidden to lease land for silver.”

In Sahīh Muslim, Rāfiʿ said:

“We had the most farmland among the people of