Paying olive pickers in tins of oil

A question on farm owners who hand their olives to pickers in return for a set number of tins of oil for the owner, in which Jordan's General Iftaa Department answered that this is invalid because of uncertainty, but valid if the yield is divided by proportion. ¹

The questioner said some olive-farm owners tell a worker at harvest: pick my farm and give me three tins of oil after pressing, and asked about the ruling. ¹

The Department explained that harvesting (jidhadh) is a contract in which the worker picks the olives in season without tending the trees; the Shafi'i principle is that a wage must be fixed and known in advance, not a share of the yield, while the Hanbalis allow a wage as a share of the yield provided it is a proportion such as a half or a third. ¹ It said the owner's stipulating three tins of oil after pressing is invalid because of uncertainty and ignorance, since the oil may fall short of the number required. ¹ It quoted al-Buhuti's Daqa'iq Uli al-Nuha that handing over property to someone who works it for a common share of its growth is valid, as with trees in sharecropping, and that the forbidden 'miller's measure' refers to a fixed quantity of the output, which leaves the worker's benefit unknown. ¹ It concluded that agreeing on picking and pressing for proportional shares, such as a half or a third, is permitted, while agreeing on two or three tins of oil is not. ¹

Jordan's General Iftaa Department published this fatwa on aliftaa.jo as no. 3840, dated 10 December 2023. ¹ The museum records this text as a historical document attributed to the body or scholar that issued it; it issues no ruling of its own.