hiring for an unspecified consideration, and that it was permitted out of necessity, since the owner of the money cannot lease it out.

The correct understanding is that these transactions are partnerships. Sharecropping is a partnership: one party contributes the use of his labour, and the other the use of his property. Whatever profit Allah apportions is shared between them, as between partners in an ‘inān partnership. Thus, the work itself is neither the object of the contract nor specified as it is in a contract of hire. If this were a contract of hire, the work would have to be specified.

To describe it as a reward-based contract would be closer, since the work in such a contract need not be specified. Moreover, it is a revocable, non-binding contract. Yet it is not a reward-based contract either, because in such a contract the two parties seek different kinds of things: one seeks the return of his runaway slave or the construction of his wall, while the other seeks the stipulated reward. In agreements to tend trees for a share of their fruit, sharecropping agreements, and profit-sharing investments, however, both parties seek the same kind of thing: profit. They share alike in gain and loss: if one receives something, so does the other; and if one receives nothing, neither does the other.

For this reason, what is stipulated for either party must be an undivided share of the profit, of the same kind as that stipulated for the other; it cannot be a specified fixed amount. This establishes that these transactions are partnerships, like an ‘inān partnership, in which the two parties share in the profit. If a fixed sum were stipulated, whether from the profit or otherwise, that would not be permissible. This is the form of sharecropping that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, prohibited, as related