Is sharecropping (muzara'a) permitted?

In al-Hisba fi al-Islam, after discussing compelling craftsmen to supply what people need at the fair wage, Ibn Taymiyya digresses to sharecropping and holds it lawful in the sounder of the scholars' two views. ¹

Ibn Taymiyya says sharecropping was the practice of Muslims under their Prophet and the Rightly Guided Caliphs, of the households of Abu Bakr, Uthman, Ali and other Emigrant families, the view of Ibn Mas'ud, and the school of the hadith jurists such as Ahmad, Ishaq ibn Rahawayh, Dawud, al-Bukhari, Ibn Khuzayma and Ibn al-Mundhir, and of al-Layth, Ibn Abi Layla, Abu Yusuf and Muhammad ibn al-Hasan. ¹ He argues from the Prophet dealing with the people of Khaybar for part of the fruit and crops until his death, an arrangement that lasted until Umar expelled them, with the seed provided by them; hence he holds it sound that the seed may come from the worker. ^{1 2} He reads the prohibition of mukhabara and land rental in the light of the explanation that they used to stipulate for the landowner the crop of a particular plot - a condition void by text and consensus. ²

Ibn Taymiyya reports that some scholars took this partnership to be hire for an unknown wage and said analogy requires forbidding it; some forbade orchard-share and sharecropping while allowing mudaraba out of need, as Abu Hanifa says; others allowed orchard-share generally, as Malik and al-Shafi'i's old view, or on palms and vines, as al-Shafi'i's new view, and allowed sharecropping as its dependent - where the land is the larger part, for al-Shafi'i, or limited to a third, for Malik. ²

Ibn Taymiyya holds that most early scholars and the jurists of the cities treated it as partnership, since each party seeks the fruit and crop, one by his labour and the other by his property, as in mudaraba; therefore he holds that if such partnerships are invalid, a fair share, not a fair wage, is due. ² He considers sharecropping more fundamental than rental and closer to justice, as both parties share gain and loss, and holds that renting out granted land (iqta') is lawful, adding that no scholar of the four schools forbade it before some of his contemporaries. ³

Ibn Hazm opens the Book of Sharecropping and Planting in al-Muhalla by saying that much sowing and planting is good and rewarded as long as it does not distract from jihad, in Arab lands and elsewhere; he faults Malik for disliking cultivation in Arab lands, reads Abu Umama's hadith on the plough, "this does not enter a people's house without humiliation entering it", as concerning farming that keeps people from jihad, and weakens reports that 'Umar had Muslims' crops in Syria burnt. ^{4 5 6}

He then lays down that land may not be rented for anything at all, neither dinars, dirhams, goods nor a named quantity of food, and that three ways are lawful: the owner farms it with his own tools, helpers and seed; he lets another farm it and takes nothing; or he gives it to one who farms it with his own seed, animals, helpers and tools for a named share of what God brings out of it, a half, a third, a quarter or the like, with nothing stipulated on the owner, and if the worker gets nothing he is owed nothing and owes nothing. ⁷ He argues from Jabir's report, "Whoever has land, let him farm it or lend it, and if he will not, let him keep his land", from Rafi' ibn Khadij's reports from his uncle Zuhayr and from another uncle who fought at Badr, and from Ibn 'Umar, who used to rent out his farmland until Rafi' told him the Prophet had forbidden renting land. ^{7 8} For sharecropping he cites the Prophet's dealing with the people of Khaybar for half of the crops or fruit it produced, on condition that they work it with their own means; he reads this condition as showing that the seed and all costs fall on the worker, so that stipulating any of them on the landowner is void, unless the owner freely lends them. ^{9 10 11}

He reports that sharecropping for a third or a quarter was allowed by Ibn Abi Layla, al-Thawri, al-Awza'i, Abu Yusuf, Muhammad ibn al-Hasan and Ibn al-Mundhir, and by Ahmad and Ishaq on condition that the seed comes from the landowner. ¹² He reports that Abu Hanifa, Malik, al-Shafi'i, Abu Yusuf, Muhammad, Zufar and Abu Sulayman Dawud all allowed renting land, all but Malik allowing it for gold, silver, a named quantity of food owed and any goods, while Malik did not allow it for anything the land produces or for food, but allowed it for timber and firewood; that Abu Hanifa and Zufar forbade giving land for a named share of its crop; that Malik allowed this only for land among trees whose open ground is a third of the whole, al-Shafi'i only for land among trees that cannot be worked except with them, and Abu Bakr ibn Dawud only when land and trees are given in one contract. ^{11 13} All of them, he says, rest on the ban on giving land for a half, third or quarter, whereas the Prophet's practice at Khaybar abrogates it: Abu Hanifa took the abrogated ruling, and Malik, al-Shafi'i and Abu Sulayman, puzzled by Khaybar, explained it in ways he regards as arbitrary; he asks Malik's followers where the limit of one third comes from. ^{13 14}

The Hanafi arguments from their own books and the details of orchard-share in the schools' manuals are not given here.