the permissibility of profit-sharing partnerships. The case of sharecropping is similar: a man cultivates land believing it to be his own, but it subsequently emerges that all or part of it belongs to someone else. The crop is therefore divided between them as in a sharecropping arrangement. Sharecropping, in its unqualified form, entails an equal division: each party receives half the crop. Accordingly, the first man is assigned half the crop as the cultivator, while the other half is allocated in return for the granted usufruct. Since the first man is entitled to a quarter of that usufruct, he receives half the crop plus a quarter of the remaining half, on the basis explained above. The second receives three-quarters of that remaining half. This is the fairest opinion concerning such a case.

Indeed, the second grantee actually has a choice: he may demand rent at the going rate from the person who cultivated his land, or he may treat the arrangement as sharecropping, just as he could choose at the outset. As for the view that he may take the crop while reimbursing the first man’s expenditure, that goes further still.

This answer also entails that, in sharecropping, the seed may be supplied by the cultivator. This is undoubtedly the correct view, even though some jurists call it mukhābarah. For it is established in an authentic report:

“The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, made an agreement with the people of Khaybar for half the fruit and crops produced by the land, on condition that they cultivate it at their own expense.”

The Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, likewise permitted this, as they themselves practised sharecropping, including the households of Abū Bakr, ʿUmar, and ʿAlī ibn Abī Tālib, and others.