Muwatta 2024

Yahya said Malik said: no one should enter profit-sharing with another except in coin, and profit-sharing in goods should not be done. Profit-sharing in goods happens in one of two ways. Either the owner of the goods tells the worker: take these goods and sell them, and with what comes from the price, buy and sell again on profit-sharing terms; then the owner has stipulated an excess for himself from the sale of his goods and what suffices for their cost. Or he says: buy with these goods and sell, and when you finish, buy for me goods like the goods I gave you, and whatever remains is between us. The owner of the goods may give them to the worker at a time when they are in demand and high in price, and the worker returns them when they have become cheap, and buys them at a third of the price or less, so the worker has gained half of what the price of the goods dropped in his share of the profit. If that is not known until it has passed, the worker's wage for selling and working on them is assessed, and he is given it. Then the money becomes profit-sharing from the day it was collected in coin, and it returns to a similar profit-sharing. ¹

Belongs to the Muwatta, Book of Profit-Sharing (qiradh). Source: the Muwatta. Mentions Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi, Malik ibn Anas. Built on in the chapters on profit-sharing (qiradh).