the worker. ʿUmar entered into sharecropping agreements on the terms that, if the owner supplied the seed, his share would be such-and-such, and if the worker supplied it, his share would be such-and-such. Al-Bukhārī mentions this. Thus, ʿUmar permitted this arrangement, and this is the correct view.

As for those who say, “This is not permissible as a contract of hire, because he prohibited ‘the miller’s measure,’” the response is: this hadith is false and baseless. It appears in none of the authoritative hadith collections, nor was it transmitted by any of the leading scholars. In the Prophet’s city, there was neither a miller who ground grain for payment nor a baker who baked for payment. Moreover, during the Prophet’s lifetime, the people of Medina had no measure called the qafīz. This measure only came into use when Iraq was conquered and land tax was imposed on its people; Iraq was not conquered during the Prophet’s lifetime, may Allah bless him and grant him peace.

These and other considerations show that these are not the words of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Rather, they are the words of certain Iraqis who disallowed such arrangements on the basis of their own independent reasoning. Furthermore, the hadith does not prohibit stipulating a proportional share of the flour, but rather a specified quantity—namely, a qafīz. The same applies to sharecropping: if either party were allotted the crops of a particular plot or a fixed quantity, the sharecropping agreement would be invalid. This is the kind of sharecropping that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited in