Issue: Is specification required—that is, specifying which particular property it is from? For example, if I possess one thousand dirhams, one hundred dinars, and trade goods, and I give ten dirhams intending them as zakat without specifying [which property they are for]. Another example is that I possess five camels and forty sheep, and I give one sheep intending it as zakat, without intending it specifically for the camels or the sheep. The jurists held that this suffices, even though they maintain that zakat is due upon the property itself, while also being connected to one’s liability.

Issue: If someone were to say: Allah, Exalted is He, says, “Take from their wealth a charity” [al-Tawbah 9:103]. Yet when one person pays it on behalf of another in order to seek reimbursement, has the zakat been taken from the owner’s wealth?

The answer is to say: What is intended is the discharge of what is due. As for His saying, Exalted is He, “Take from their wealth a charity,” it serves to clarify that zakat applies to what a person owns.

It is preferable that he distribute it himself.

His statement, “It is preferable that he distribute it himself,” means that it is preferable for the person upon whom zakat is due to distribute the zakat on his own property himself—that is, to undertake it personally. This is for three reasons:

First: that he may attain the reward for the effort involved, for distributing it is an act of worship.

Second: that he may discharge his liability with certainty. A representative may be somewhat negligent in giving it to someone who is not entitled to receive it, or in distributing it promptly; or he may be negligent such that it is lost while in his possession; or the like.

Third: that he may spare himself blame, particularly if he is a well-known wealthy man and people do not know that he has a representative. They may then criticize him and say, “So-and-so does not pay zakat.”