permissible. This is one of the two positions reported from Ahmad, adopted by a group of his followers and by followers of Mālik and al-Shāfi‘ī in those cases where they permit sharecropping.

Their argument rests on an analogy with mudāraba (a capital-and-labour partnership), an argument Ahmad also invoked. Al-Kirmānī said:

“Abū ‘Abd Allāh Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Hanbal was asked about a man who entrusted his land to a cultivator in return for a third or a quarter of the yield. He replied: ‘There is nothing wrong with that, provided the landowner supplies the seed and the cultivator supplies the cattle, iron implements and labour.’ He treated this as analogous to mudāraba.”

The reasoning is that seed is the source of the crop, just as capital is the source of profit. The seed must therefore come from the owner of the underlying property, so that one party supplies the labour and the other supplies the productive asset.

The second position reported from him does not stipulate this; rather, the cultivator may supply the seed. A great many of his followers—more than twenty—have transmitted from him that a man may lease his land in return for a third or a quarter of its yield, just as the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, dealt with the people of Khaybar.

A group of his followers, including al-Qādī Abū Ya‘lā, therefore said: If someone entrusts his land to a person who cultivates it with his own seed, with a share of the crop going to the landowner, this is permissible if arranged as a lease, but not if arranged as sharecropping. They regarded this distinction as a means of upholding