the miller.” This means hiring someone to grind grain in return for a portion of the flour.

The correct approach is the first: what matters in contracts is their meaning and purpose, not merely their wording. This is the principle followed by Ahmad and the majority of scholars, and it is one of the two views within al-Shāfiʿī’s school. Some of Ahmad’s companions, however, may regard the ruling as changing according to the wording used, as al-Shāfiʿī also sometimes indicates. Examples include an advance-payment sale with immediate delivery expressed in the terms of an ordinary sale, a release from marriage for compensation expressed in the terms of divorce, and a lease expressed in the terms of a sale. These and similar matters are discussed at length elsewhere.

As for those who say that sharecropping requires the owner to supply the seed, they have neither scriptural evidence nor any report from the Companions to support this. Rather, they have drawn an analogy with a profit-sharing investment partnership. They say: “Just as, in a profit-sharing investment partnership, one person provides the labour and another the capital, so too, in orchard-tending and sharecropping partnerships, one person provides the labour and another the capital, with the seed supplied by the capital owner.”

This analogy is unsound. In a profit-sharing investment partnership, the capital returns to its owner, and the two parties divide the profit. Its counterpart is therefore the land or trees, which return to their owner, while the two parties divide the fruit and crops. As for the seed, they do not return it to its owner; rather, it is consumed without replacement, just as the labour of the worker and his oxen is expended without replacement. It is therefore akin to the provision of a benefit rather than a contribution of capital. Requiring the worker to supply it would thus accord more closely with the analogy. This also agrees with what is reported from the Companions, may Allah be pleased with them, for some of them entered into sharecropping agreements in which the seed was supplied by