and when she had finished the verse, he said to her, “May my father and mother be ransomed for you, for your father, and for your children. It is for me to listen and bear patiently. By the Book of Allah, by the Messenger’s right, and by the right of his kin: I read the Book of Allah just as you do, yet nothing in my knowledge leads me to conclude that the relatives of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ are entitled to this entire share of the khums (the one-fifth levy) in its totality.”
She asked, “Then is it for you and for your relatives?” He answered, “No. You, to me, are trustworthy and truthful. If the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had entrusted you with a covenant about this or had made you a promise that would establish it as your right, I would take you at your word and hand it over to you.”
She replied, “No—but when this was revealed to him, the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, ‘Rejoice, O family of Muhammad, for riches have come to you.’”
Abu Bakr said, “You speak the truth; prosperity is yours. Yet neither my understanding of the matter nor of this verse indicates that the whole of this share should be delivered intact. What you have is the sufficiency that will enrich you and leave you with surplus. See whether any of them agrees with you on that.”
She then went to ʿUmar and reported to him exactly what she had said to Abu Bakr. He responded to her in the very same way, so she was astonished and assumed that the two men had discussed the matter and reached a joint decision.
With a chain of transmission that goes back to Muhammad ibn ʿAbd Allah—without mentioning al-Walid ibn Muslim—he said: al-Zuhri told me, “Someone who heard Ibn ʿAbbas said: ʿUmar once offered to give us something from the fayʾ (state revenues) in proportion to what he thought was our entitlement, but we refused and said, ‘We are entitled to what Allah has named for the people of near kin—the one-fifth of the khums.’ ʿUmar replied, ‘You have no such right as you claim. Allah has assigned the khums to specific categories He has named, and the greatest share in it belongs to those who are poorest and have the most dependants.’” Ibn ʿAbbas continued, “After that, whenever one of us came forward, ʿUmar would allocate to him from the khums and the fayʾ what he considered appropriate. Some of us accepted it, while others declined.”