He said: I said to Tawus: "If you were to abandon sharecropping (mukhabara), for they claim that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) prohibited it." He replied: "The most knowledgeable among them"—meaning Ibn 'Abbas—"informed me that the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) did not prohibit it, but rather said: 'For one of you to grant [the use of land] to his brother is better for him than to take a known rent for it.'" Furthermore, among the hadiths of Rafi' are some that contradict the consensus, namely the prohibition of renting farms absolutely, and others whose corruption is undisputed, as we have clarified. Sometimes he narrates from some of his paternal uncles, sometimes from his own hearing, and sometimes from Zuhayr ibn Rafi'. If the reports of Rafi' are like this, it is necessary to discard them (21) and make use of the reports regarding the affair of Khaybar, which have attained the status of tawatur (successive transmission), about which there is no disagreement. The Rightly Guided Caliphs and others acted upon them, so there is no point in abandoning them for such weak hadiths. The fourth answer is that if one were to assume the soundness of the report of Rafi', and its interpretation were prevented, and reconciling the texts proved impossible, then it would be necessary to regard it as abrogated. This is because one of the two reports must be abrogated, and it is impossible to assert the abrogation of the hadith of Khaybar, given that it was acted upon by the Prophet (may Allah bless him and grant him peace) until his death, and then (22) after him until the era of the Successors (Tabi'un). So when could it have been abrogated? As for the hadith of Jabir regarding the prohibition of sharecropping, it must be interpreted in one of the ways that the report of Rafi' was interpreted, for he also narrated the hadith of Khaybar; therefore, it is necessary to reconcile between his two hadiths however possible. Then, even if it were interpreted as sharecropping, it would be abrogated by the story of Khaybar, for it is impossible for it to be abrogated as we have mentioned. The same applies to the hadith of Zayd ibn Thabit. If the companions of al-Shafi'i say: "Your hadiths are interpreted as referring to land between date palms, and the hadiths of prohibition as referring to barren land, as a reconciliation between them," we say: "This is far-fetched for five reasons: First, it is unlikely that a large town from which forty thousand wasq of produce comes would have no barren land, and it is unlikely that he (the Prophet) made a transaction with them for some of the land and not the rest, yet the narrators would all report the story generally without detail, despite the need for it. Second, the interpretation they mention has no evidence...