he would owe no rent, since delivery of the leased benefit was impossible. The author of al-Tafrī‘ likewise reported Mālik’s position on both cases.

Al-Qādī thus distinguishes between the two cases in keeping with the two differing explicit rulings. He distinguishes the loss of the water supply from flooding and other calamities on the grounds that the loss of water entails the loss of the very benefit contracted for: the subject of the contract is land supplied with water. The loss of its customary water supply is therefore tantamount to failure to provide the stipulated benefit, as when a hired animal dies. Rent is due only so long as the stipulated benefit continues to be provided. Flooding and other calamities that ruin the crop, however, destroy property belonging to the lessee himself. This is comparable to someone renting a house and having a garment of his destroyed in it.

The essential distinction is that, when the water supply is cut off, the benefit is no longer available; when the crop is destroyed, the benefit remains available, but something has occurred that destroys the lessee’s property. This is comparable to its being destroyed after harvest.

A group of scholars of our school, including Shaykh Abū Muhammad, treat the loss of water and flooding that prevents sowing or harms the crop alike with regard to the lease. If this renders the benefit unavailable, the rent ceases to be due. If benefit remains possible, but with hardship arising from its diminished extent—for example, if flooding prevents some cultivation or impairs the crop—the lessee acquires the right to rescind the lease. But if no harm results—as when floodwater recedes shortly afterward without preventing sowing or harming the crop, or when the land’s water supply is cut off but the lessor brings water to it from elsewhere, or the interruption occurs at a time when water is not needed—he would not