Long-term Rent from the Perspective of Jurisprudential Schools of Islam

Scientific progresses and creation of various offices and businesses with new methods of money making on one hand and lack of affordance to buy required building of the business on the other hand, resulted in the prevalence of lease more than a year between people and communities. Among Shia Jurists, Allamah Helli investigated lease more than a year for the first time and referred to some examples. In Sunni sects, Hanafiyah mentioned lease more than a year for the first time. Shafi‘i, Malik and Ahmad bin Hanbal mentioned that such a lease may be considered possible. In present study, performed analytically and descriptively, the accurateness of lease more than a year is concluded by some reasons while referring to rental agreements. Long time ago, medium-term annual lease or short-term lease for a couple of months was frequent due to the simplicity of the people. However, lease up to thirty years was common in Bokhara, although some Sunni scholars like Shafi‘i, restricted long-term lease to thirty years and did not allow longer lease terms. Such idea was justified as thirty-year term is an exaggeration and it meant renting the building not the land and the building will not survive for longer term. Accordingly, lease duration depends on the survival of the building and making a restriction like thirty years for that does not make sense. Different Islamic jurisprudential schools stated the possibility to divide the rental price and use multiple contracts to prevent loss of both sides as of some problems like inflation.