As for the reports of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadij on which the opponents rely, the scholars have scrutinised them and found them inconsistent and variable. At one time the prohibition is narrated from his paternal uncles, at another from Rāfiʿ ibn Zuhayr, at a third from his own direct hearing; in one version the Prophet ﷺ is said to have forbidden the leasing of land, in another he forbade hiring for a fixed wage, and in yet another he prohibited assigning a third, a quarter, or a specified amount of grain to one of the parties.

Because of this variation the narrations became confused and suspect, to the point that Imam Aḥmad said, “The hadith of Rāfiʿ comes in many shapes and kinds.” Some Companions rejected it outright, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar did not even hear of it until the caliphate of Muʿāwiyah. How could a ruling of such consequence have remained unknown to them while they were actually practising the transaction?

Even supposing the narrations were consistent and sound, the scholars have given convincing answers to them and to the report of Jābir. The best of these answers is to reconcile them with the ḥadiths of Khaybar by interpreting the prohibitive texts as referring to a defective form of muzāraʿah in which uncertainty and ignorance enter, giving it a resemblance to games of chance and competitive gambling. This is a persuasive construction, explicitly stated in some of the transmission-lines of the very hadiths in question.

For that reason Shams al-Dīn Ibn al-Qayyim said: “Whoever examines the hadith of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadij, gathers its various chains, weighs them against one another, and interprets the general in light of the explicit and the unqualified in light of the qualified, will know that what the Prophet ﷺ forbade is something clearly corrupt—namely an oppressive, unjust form of crop-sharing. Rāfiʿ said, ‘We used to lease land on condition that this plot was ours and that one theirs; sometimes this plot produced and that one did not.’ In another wording he said, ‘In the time of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ people used to rent land for what was on the banks of the streams, the mouths of the irrigation channels, and certain parts of the crop.’ And he also said, ‘The people had no form of leasing other than this, and for that reason he forbade it. But if the return is something specified and guaranteed, there is no harm.’ This is the clearest and soundest version of Rāfiʿ’s report. Anything within it that is abridged, general, or unqualified must be understood in the light of this clarified, definitive narration—agreed upon both in wording and in ruling.”

Al-Layth ibn Saʿd remarked, “What the Messenger of Allah ﷺ prohibited is something that anyone with insight into what is lawful and unlawful would recognise to be impermissible, because of the risk it involves.”

Ibn al-Mundhir said, “The reports from Rāfiʿ come with stated causes that show the prohibition was due to those very causes.”

Al-Khaṭṭābī observed, “Abū Ḥanīfah, Mālik, and al-Shāfiʿī adopted the outward purport of the hadith as narrated by Rāfiʿ ibn Khadij, without discerning its underlying reason as Aḥmad did.”

Al-Khaṭṭābī further said, “Crop-sharing on the basis of one half or one third—”