Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range of different situations and types of agreements that have used a form of the system. Some are governed by tradition, and others by law. The Italian mezzadria, the French métayage, the Catalan masoveria, the Castilian mediero, the Slavic połowcy and izdolshchina, and the Islamic system of muzara‘a (المزارعة), are examples of legal systems that have supported sharecropping.