Malik. Abu Hanifa and al-Shafi'i said: All of that and its likes are permissible if it is not stipulated in the contract. Some of al-Shafi'i's companions said: It is disliked to enter into a sale based on that, because anything whose condition is not permissible in a contract, it is disliked to enter into it. Our argument is that Allah Almighty punished a nation for a ruse they employed, so He transformed them into monkeys and called them transgressors, and He made that a punishment and a lesson for the God-fearing, so that they may take a lesson from them and refrain from the likes of their actions. Some exegetes said regarding the saying of the Almighty: {and a lesson for the God-fearing} (22), meaning for the nation of Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. It is narrated that they used to set their nets for fish on Friday and leave them until Sunday. Among them were those who would dig pits and create channels leading to them, opening them on Friday; when the fish came on Saturday, it would flow with the water into the channels and fall into the pits, then they would leave it until Sunday and take it, saying: "I did not fish on Saturday, nor did I transgress on it." This is a ruse. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said: "Whoever inserts a horse between two horses, while he is secure that it will not win, is gambling; and whoever inserts a horse between two horses while he is not secure that it will not win, it is not gambling." Narrated by Abu Dawood and others (23). He deemed it gambling even with the insertion of the third horse, because it does not negate the essence of gambling, which is that each of the two racers cannot be separated from being a taker or one taken from. He only entered it in form, as a ruse to make the prohibited permissible, and all other ruses are like this. Furthermore, Allah Almighty only prohibited these (24) prohibited things because of their corruption and the harm resulting from them, and their corruption does not cease with the persistence (25) of their meaning by the two parties manifesting a form other than their [true] form. Therefore, the prohibition must not cease, just as if one were to name wine by a name other than its own, that would not make its consumption permissible. It has come from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, that he said: "A people from my nation will surely make wine lawful, calling it by a name other than its name" (26). Among the ruses regarding things other than usury is that they seek to sell [the prohibited thing] by having one lease the bare land of a garden for the equivalent of its rent, then having him sharecrop (musaqat) the fruit of its trees for a portion—one part out of a thousand for the owner, and nine hundred and ninety-nine for the worker—and the owner takes nothing from him, nor does he intend that; rather, he intends to sell the fruit before its state of ripeness becomes apparent through what he termed 'rent,' and the worker also intends nothing else. Perhaps he does not even benefit from the land for which he termed the rent. And whenever the fruit does not come out, or a calamity strikes it, the lessee comes to claim for the calamity, believing that he had only given his money in exchange for the fruit and nothing else, and the owner of the land knows that.