Participatory Based Transactions in Sharī‘ah (Islamic Commercial Law) and Their Role in the Development of Rural Local Agricultural Sector in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa

Local farming is, indeed, the most important sector of agriculture through which farmers grow food. However, owing to their weak financial conditions, they are not able to get maximum benefits from their labours for most of the times. The case of Pakistani farmers, particularly in rural areas of KP (Khyber Pakhtunkhwa), is not different in this connection. They frequently resort to formal and informal sources of financing to accomplish their basic agricultural requirements: both crops and non-crops inclusive. However, all these sources advance financing facility on interest basis. Being typical Muslims, such agricultural credit is, therefore, avoided by these farmers and, as a result, they always endure on their financial grounds. In such situations, some substitute arrangements are recommended to reciprocate with their problems. This alternative is offered by Sharī‘ah through various commercial transactions – among which participatory based transaction i.e. Mushārakah is the most suitable and important one. In the present work, various models are proposed on the basis of such transaction to fulfill various agricultural requirements of farmers, living in rural areas of KP.  In addition, such models are structured in the light of basic theory, available in the classical literature of Islamic law, in order to make them more Sharī‘ah based rather Sharī‘ah compliant. The proposed models are then, at the second stage, tested at ground level to strengthen further their viability for all stake holders. Findings show that all agricultural requirements, particularly heavy machinery and transport, can be realized through such models provided if they are applied in their true spirit. Moreover, content analysis and focused group technique of qualitative research have been used, as a research methodology, for the investigation of the issue in the present work.

Ln3+ Ions Doped Phosphate Glasses for Solid State Lighting Applications

In present study, Lanthanide ions doped oxide and oxyfluoride phosphate glasses were prepared through melt quenching technique. Subsequently, properly cut and polished samples were studied through XRD, FTIR, density, refractive index, absorption spectra, photoluminescence spectra, X-rays induced luminescence spectra, JO analysis, lifetime study and CIE coordinates analysis. The recorded XRD pattern show broad bands without any sharp peaks which show that these glasses are amorphous in nature. The FTIR results show that the band corresponding to OH vibrations decrease in oxyfluoride glass samples compared to the oxide glasses. The decrease in the intensity of OH group bands, is due to the decrease of amounts of OH in the glass composition by reaction with fluorene to produce HF. The measured density shows the overall increasing trend with increase in the rear earth concentrations and also the densities of oxide glasses are higher than the oxyfluoride glasses which show that the structures of oxide glasses are more compact than the oxyfluoride glasses. The absorption spectra (Uv-Vis-NIR region) contain the corresponding doped rare earth ions transitions peaks. For Dysprosium (Dy3+), Samarium (Sm3+) and Europium (Eu3+) ions doped glasses most intense peaks correspond to 6H15→6H9/2+6F11/2, 6H5/2→6F7/2 and 7F0→5L6 transitions, respectively. The positions of the absorption bands are slightly change with change in the glass compositions. Similarly, the recorded excitation spectra of present glasses have corresponding Sm3+, Eu3+ and Dy3+ transition peaks along with the Gd3+ ions transitions peaks. Subsequently, the recorded emission spectra show the energy transfer from excited Gd3+ ions to Dy3+, Sm3+ or Eu3+ ions present in glass compositions. The transitions 8H5/2→6P3/2, 7F0 →5L6 and 6H15/2→ 4M15/2 + 6P7/2 are the hyper sensitive transition for Dy3+, Sm3+ and Eu3+ respectively. The emission spectra recorded at the respective wavelength observed for hypersensitive transitions in excitation spectra demonstrate that the oxyfluoride glass samples show comparatively higher emission intensity. The emission intensities increase with increasing RE3+ ions concentrations up to 1 mol% in the case of Dy3+ and Sm3+ ions doping there after start decreasing. While in the case of Eu3+ ions, the emission intensity upsurges and no luminescence quenching observed in 0.0 to 2.0 mol% concentration range. It is believed that the concentration quenching occurs due to non-radiative energy transfer among the RE3+ ions through cross relaxation channels. In X-rays induce luminescence spectra studied in present work show same trend and number of emission peaks as that of photoluminescence emission spectra but with different intensity and slightly different peaks positions due to the different irradiation sources. Several radiative properties i.e., Branching ratio, quantum efficiency, radiative lifetime, stimulated emission cross sections and radiative transition probabilities were calculated with JO theory. Lifetime of present glasses were recorded with respective emission and excitations wavelength and it is found that lifetime decrease with increasing concentration of Dy3+ and Sm3+ ions, while for Eu3+ ions no significant variations observed in lifetime values. Moreover, lifetime curve shows single exponential nature at lo wer concentration of rare earth and deviate from the single exponential behavior as the concertation of rare earth increase. This non-single exponential behavior of lifetime curves are fitted in the framework of Inokuti-Hirayama (IH) model to understand energy transfer mechanism involved in respective case. Subsequently, the color of emitted light was compared with 1931 CIE (Commission International de I’Eclairage) chromatic color coordinates.