The sharecropper’s right of residence

Question

Question: A certain person, say Zayd, had for seventy or eighty years been the sharecropper (muzariʿ) of ʿAmr. ʿAmr and others had told the sharecropper: “If you stay right here and build yourself a residence (a house) and so on, we will not remove you, as long as you do not leave us.” So this sharecropper came to this well, built a house to live in and so on, and went on cultivating the land at the well on the basis of a lease for a fixed rent.

Answer

It is evident that the owner gave the sharecropper permission to build a house on his land and to live there so that he would continue the sharecropping (muzaraʿa) and the dealing between the owner and the sharecropper would remain in force.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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