How to reconcile the Prophet’s prohibition of sharecropping with its prescription?

The questioner : Our Shaykh, a hadith of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) has been reported regarding the prohibition of sharecropping.

The Shaykh: Yes.

The questioner : How do we reconcile this with the action of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) with the people of Khaybar, when he contracted with them for half of what came out of it?

The Shaykh : Yes, indeed. This is one thing and that is another. The sharecropping that is prohibited is the kind they practiced in the early days of Islam, where the owner of the land would lease his land to another and stipulate a portion of the land that was close to the irrigation channels, assuming that this portion would yield a greater and more abundant harvest than the other portions. Then Allah (Mighty and Majestic) willed that the result be contrary to what he had assumed. So the owner of the land would quarrel with the tenant and say, “I stipulated the second side for you based on the fact that it would be more abundant.” This was an example of a dispute arising between the lessor and the lessee, so they were prohibited from this type of sharecropping. As for sharecropping based on a third or a quarter, it is based on a specific percentage of the land’s yield, regardless of designating a specific part of it. This is the sharecropping with which the Messenger (peace be upon him) dealt with the people of Khaybar, and the practice continued among the Ansar in Medina. I think the answer is clear.