The Position of Islam from the Rent System: A reading in the Rules of Agricultural Contracts

Research on distribution in Islam has largely been dominated by the discussion of capital and the prohibition of interest. This paper, however, is devoted to examining Islam’s position on rent. Since no explicit ruling is found in the Qur’an, the study turns to the Sunnah concerning agricultural contracts as the primary source for investigation. The findings reveal that the Sunnah did not permit rent or shares to be taken from uncultivated land (arḍ bayḍāʾ), and explicitly prohibited contracts involving such arrangements—whether fixed-rent tenancy or sharecropping.
While the early jurists refrained from endorsing many agricultural contracts in adherence to the prohibitive ḥadīth, most contemporary opinions have introduced alternative interpretations to override the apparent meaning of these texts, thereby allowing contracts such as kirāʾ, mukhābara, and muzāraʿa. This paper concludes that such views do not align with the objectives of the Sunnah. It argues instead for the invalidity of these contracts and highlights their negative consequences for the efficiency of agricultural exploitation systems.
Keywords: Rent, Agricultural Contracts, Sunnah, Sharecropping, Islamic Economic System