and for longer periods as well; cash payment, however, is not to be made unless the land is deemed secure from drought.
Should the term of the lease expire while crops remain on the land—still unripe, unharvested, or not yet removed—the owner is entitled, from the day the lease ends until the crop is finally gathered, to the going rent of comparable land, whether that figure equals, exceeds, or falls short of the original rent.
There is no objection to leasing irrigated land on condition that the owner himself undertakes the watering, so long as this is clearly specified.
If someone plants another’s land under the mistaken belief that he owns it, then once the true owner establishes his right—and provided the crop is still standing—the owner may claim the normal rent for that land.
When a man rents land, sows it, the crop sprouts, and then the sky withholds rain so that the crop is lost, the landlord is owed no rent. The same ruling applies if the land is later taken away through litigation, or is rendered unfit by excessive water so that cultivation could not be carried out at the proper time—the rent is nullified. Likewise, if a flood overwhelms and destroys the crop, the tenant is released from the rent. In every other circumstance, once the crop has sprouted and taken root, the rent remains binding on the cultivator.
It is related from Mālik that if the tenant sows the land, water is available, yet the seed fails to germinate, the rent is not waived. Mālik is also reported to have said that if the land becomes waterlogged, the rent is still due.
Nor is the rent cancelled by any calamity that befalls the land after the crop has grown, whether infestation by worms, wind, fire, a flood that breaks the stalks, hail that ruins them, or any other agricultural disaster—frost, locusts, and the like—apart from the specific cases already mentioned.
Mālik considered it disliked for a lease to stipulate that only wheat may be planted, or only barley, or only broad beans, or any other single, specified crop; other scholars take a more lenient view, and some even regard it as preferable to