Islamic Fiqh > Zakat > General rules of zakat > Zakat: definition and status
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Updated on 27 September 2026 at 3:52 AM
Zakat is the third pillar of Islam. Before studying its rates and recipients, one must define the term itself, establish the proofs of its obligation, date its enactment and grasp the fundamental divergence running through the schools: is zakat an act of worship like prayer, or a right of the poor upon the rich? This section gathers these foundations from the sheets of the first chapter of the zakat book.
It complements the sections already published on the legal status, the wisdom and the withholder, adding the terminological definition, the debated dates and the principle of proportionality between effort and rate detailed in the sheets.
Lexicographers and jurists give converging definitions. According to one of them, zakat is a name for a specific amount, taken from a specific kind of wealth, to be paid to specific categories, under specific conditions (Mughni al-Muhtaj 2/86; al-Iqna' 1/211).
The same word also names the sum paid: the payer is said to "set apart the zakat of his wealth", and the collecting agent is said to "receive the zakat". The phrase "he purified his wealth" means he paid out its zakat; the term muzakki designates both the one who pays on his own wealth and the one who holds the authority of collection (Mawahib al-Jalil 2/255; Kashshaf al-Qina' 2/165-166).
The word finally extends beyond the legal alms: it covers the obligatory and the recommended charity, the spending on one's dependents, a due right and forgiveness (Fath al-Bari 3/262; Sharh az-Zarqani 2/128).
The Quran establishes the obligation repeatedly. Allah says:
And establish prayer and give zakat.
Sourate al-Baqarah 43
He threatens those who hoard gold and silver with a painful punishment and with branded plates on the day the metals will be brought to a red heat in the fire of Hell; such a threat strikes none but the one who neglects an obligation:
Those who hoard gold and silver and do not spend it in the path of Allah, announce to them a painful punishment: the day it will be heated in the fire of Hell and their foreheads, flanks and backs will be branded with it.
Sourate at-Tawbah 34-35
The Sunna confirms and specifies:
Islam is built upon five: the testimony that there is no god but Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah, the establishment of prayer, the giving of zakat, the pilgrimage and the fast of Ramadan.
narrated by al-Bukhari (8) and Muslim (16)
The Prophet also sent Mu'adh to Yemen with the order to announce that Allah has made obligatory upon the people a charity in their wealth, taken from their rich and returned to their poor (narrated by al-Bukhari (1395) and Muslim (19)). In a long narration he detailed the fate of the negligent owner: the one who possesses gold or silver without paying its due will have plates of fire heated for him in the fire of Hell, his flank, forehead and back branded with them, and the same applies to the owner of camels, cattle and sheep; the horse and the slave of the Muslim, on their side, carry no charity (narrated by Muslim (987) and al-Bukhari (4678, 6923)).
The community agreed that zakat is an obligation and a pillar. After the death of the Prophet, a debate first opposed Umar to Abu Bakr, reported in the two Sahihs:
Umar said: how will you fight the people while the messenger of Allah said: I have been ordered to fight the people until they say there is no god but Allah, and whoever says it has protected from me his wealth and his life except by his right? Abu Bakr replied: by Allah, I will surely fight whoever separated prayer from zakat, for zakat is the right due on wealth; by Allah, if they withheld from me a she-camel hobble they used to give to the messenger of Allah, I would fight them over it. Umar said: by Allah, it was then that Allah opened the chest of Abu Bakr, and I knew it was the truth.
narrated by al-Bukhari (1335) and Muslim (20)
The initial disagreement immediately settled into the agreement of all the companions, the canonical example of ijma cited by the usulis (al-Majmu' 5/301). Ibn Mundhir records the consensus on the obligatory character of zakat as the third pillar; Ibn Battal adds that whoever denies one of these five obligations does not complete his Islam, and Ibn al-Athir specifies that whoever withholds it while denying its obligation is declared out of Islam, unless he is a recent convert unaware of this ruling; al-Qushayri writes that it is taken from the withholder by force, and that he is killed if he takes up arms to refuse it, as Abu Bakr did with the people of the ridda (Umdat al-Qari 8/233-234).
Reason confirms this status in three ways. First, paying zakat helps the weak and rescues the destitute, strengthening the incapable in fulfilling what Allah imposed on him, and the means to fulfill an obligation takes the ruling of that obligation. Second, it purifies the soul of the contributor from the filth of sins and elevates his character through generosity, against miserliness, the ugliest of traits. Third, Allah has lavished the rich with wealth exceeding essential needs: gratitude for such a blessing makes the payment due (Bada'i' as-Sana'i' 2/381-382).
Giving zakat existed in the laws of the previous prophets. Allah says about Ibrahim and his line:
We made them leaders guiding by Our command, and We revealed to them the doing of good, the establishment of prayer and the giving of zakat, and they worshipped Us.
Sourate al-Anbiya 73
For the Muslim community, charity to the poor was prescribed from the Meccan period: surah al-Balad calls to scale the steep pass by freeing a slave and feeding on a day of hunger, and surah al-Ma'arij reserves for the beggar and the deprived a known right in the wealth of the believers.
Zakat proper, the one bound to the nisab and the year, was made obligatory after the hijra according to the majority view. Ibn Hajar writes that the divergence concerns the exact moment: some say the second year before the fast of Ramadan was enjoined, Ibn al-Athir settles for the ninth year with reservation, and Ibn Khuzayma claims it preceded the hijra, relying on the report of Umm Salama in which Ja'far tells the Negus that the Prophet orders prayer, zakat and fasting. Ibn Hajar answers that the five prayers and the fast of Ramadan were not yet prescribed at that time: those words refer at best to the rulings in general, without the nisab-and-year zakat being meant (Fath al-Bari 3/262-268, narrated by Ibn Khuzayma in his Sahih).
Another indicator supports the later date:
The messenger of Allah ordered us the zakat of breaking the fast before zakat was revealed; when zakat was revealed, he ordered us nothing and forbade us nothing, and we kept doing it.
narrated by al-Hakim with an authentic chain (Fath al-Bari 3/267-268)
This report of Qays ibn Sa'd places the obligation of zakat after the fast of Ramadan was enjoined, hence after the hijra.
Ibn Rushd reduces several juristic divergences, such as the one on zakat of the wealth of a minor or a disbeliever, to a divergence over the very concept of zakat: is it an act of worship like prayer and fasting, or a right of the poor and the needy over the wealth of the rich? Whoever conceives it as worship requires puberty and sanity, since worship requires intention; whoever conceives it as a right disregards both. As for those who distinguish what the earth produces from what it does not, or hidden wealth from visible wealth, Ibn Rushd declares he knows no support for such distinctions in his time (Bidayat al-Mujtahid 1/339-340). This compass clarifies the detailed rulings on the wealth of the minor, the insane and the non-Muslim: the majority formed by the Malikites, the Shafi'ites and the Hanbalites obliges zakat on the wealth of the minor and the insane, the guardian paying it from their fortune with the account settled after puberty, while the Hanafites exempt them except the tithe of crops and the zakat of breaking the fast.
Ibn al-Qayyim highlights the proportionality between the effort of growth and the rate taken: the profit of trade, hard and laborious, is taxed at the quarter of a tenth; crops watered at cost, with less effort, at half a tenth; crops watered by themselves, with still lighter effort, at the full tenth, with a single zakat since their growth ends with the harvest; the buried treasure, already gathered and easy to extract, at the fifth. This eloquent proportion attests to him the perfection of the Law, which no human reason could have proposed.
Shah Wali Allah justifies the thresholds the same way: five wasq of grains and dates, about 610 kilos, suffice the smallest household for a year, composed at the least of the two spouses and a third between them; five awaq of silver cover a year of a small household when prices are ordinary in most lands; as for the camel, the most useful animal for slaughter, riding, milk, breeding, wool and hide, it equalled ten, eight or twelve sheep in the narrations, so that five heads enter the first nisab of sheep and a single ewe is due on them (Hujjat Allah al-Baligha 2/506).
Keeping in mind that zakat is both worship and a social right preserves its two dimensions: it is paid correctly only with intention and inner purification, and it fulfills its role only when it actually reaches the categories designated by the Lawgiver.