Muwatta, Book of Irrigation Partnership (musaqat)

The Book of Musaqat (irrigation and orchard partnership) is the nineteenth book of the Muwatta in the transmission of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi from Malik ibn Anas, in the edition of Bashshar Awwad Ma'ruf (1997), in the second volume. It occupies pages 239 to 247 in the PDF pagination, and contains 24 numbered texts (2049–2072) in two chapters. It concerns musaqat and the work and expenses that may be included in it, and the conditions that would turn it into hire or uncertainty. ^{1 2}

• What is reported on musaqat (2049–2069): the musaqat of the people of Khaybar and the estimation by Abd Allah ibn Rawaha (may God be pleased with him), the custom on work and expenses, and the ruling on bare land among the palms. ^{1 3}
• Conditions on slaves in musaqat (2070–2072): the workers who are slaves, what the one who does the musaqat and the owner of the land stipulate about them, and replacing those who die, disappear or fall ill. ^{3 2}

Malik gives precedence to "the custom" in musaqat over the known works on which fruit depends, forbids either partner to take more than the other, and returns any part of the contract that mixes in hire to the rules of hire. ^{4 5}

The editor quotes al-Bukhari and the scholars of hadith on the raised (marfu') report of Khaybar, judges it to be a cut-off report, and points out that most of the Muwatta's transmitters narrated it in this form. ^{1 6}

Each text of the book has its own record. It names the highest narrator and the chapter, gives the substance of the report in the museum's own wording, and records the editor's takhrij where it is needed. See Musaqat for the places where its rulings appear in the book. ¹