They argue: “What is sought through the lease is the food, so this is tantamount to selling food for food of the same kind.”

They also argue: “This is a form of mukhābara, which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, forbade. It is also tantamount to muzābana, since it amounts to selling something for something of the same kind by estimate.”

The correct position, however, is that of the majority, because what the lease entitles the tenant to is the use of the land. Hence, if he is able to cultivate it but does not do so, he must still pay the rent. The food is produced only through his own labour and seed, and the lessor did not supply him with that seed. Thus, this has nothing to do with ribā (usury).

An analogous case is that of someone hiring people to extract gold or silver ore, or buried treasure, from the earth in return for dirhams or dinars. This is not like exchanging dirhams for dirhams. Likewise, someone may hire a worker to till the land, sow it, and irrigate it, paying him with grain from his own supplies, while the work for which he has hired him includes sowing grain on his behalf. This is analogous to the case under discussion.

Rāfi‘, the narrator of the hadith, explained that the mukhābara forbidden by the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, was a sharecropping arrangement stipulating that the landowner receive the crop from a particular plot. Some scholars, however, classified all sharecropping as mukhābara, as did Abū Hanīfa.

Others, such as al-Shāfi‘ī, held that sharecropping on bare land constitutes mukhābara.

Others held that sharecropping in which the cultivator supplies the seed constitutes mukhābara.

Still others held that leasing land in return for produce of the same kind as that grown on it is a form of