Analysis of the Legal Nature of Lease Documents

Among the important discourses in financial law are the issues related to financial institutions. Going through these issues are of considerable significance in Islamic law since the lawmaker prohibits specific types of transactions – usurious, risk taking, harmful. Enquiry into the legitimacy and nature of new financial products is among the important ventures of Islamic financial law. One of the new financial tools is the lease documents (sukuk). Analysis of the legal nature of these documents – as a novel contract – is of importance because it has been unprecedented in Iranian legal surveys and its legitimacy, nature, descriptions, and repercussions have not been sufficiently examined. In this article, the technical features, legitimacy, nature, and legal repercussions of these documents are reviewed and analyzed. Given the similarity of the ordinances of these documents with lease contract and the possibility of their comparison with contract by compromise (‘aqd ṣulḥ), while explaining some of the differences of these documents with lease contract – including distinction between the volition of the two parties to a transaction and some ordinances – and by accepting the difference between contract by compromise and article 10 of civil law, the lease documents contract was eventually confirmed and its legal repercussions were analyzed as a new and legitimate contract by virtue of the principle of general permissibility under article 10 of civil law.