But if the custom is that an unrestricted lease does not include freely available pasture, then such pasture is not included in it. And Allah knows best.

He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:

A man leased some land on another man’s behalf, in accordance with Islamic law, for a specified period. The man on whose behalf it was leased subsequently died. When arranging the lease for this period, the agent had paid the lessor a year’s rent in advance through his agent. The landowner then brought a claim against the heir of the man on whose behalf the land had been leased, and was asked to establish the authority of the agent who had arranged the lease. Must the claimant prove that agency after having received a year’s rent from him, given that it was he, rather than the agent, who benefited from the leased land?

He replied:

If the person alleged to have had the land leased on his behalf benefited from it, he is liable to compensate for the use he enjoyed, whether or not the land was leased. If, in these circumstances, he does not acknowledge that he enjoyed its use under a lease or with the owner’s permission, then he is a usurper who deserves discretionary punishment of a kind that deters him and other transgressors like him from wronging people and denying their rights.

All this applies when neither the facts mentioned nor any facts left unmentioned indicate the existence of a lease. Even if the cultivator claimed that he cultivated the land only under a gratuitous loan, and the other party said: