and an unbroken chain belongs to the categories of weak ḥadīth.

His statement in the commentary: “If the niṣāb (minimum taxable amount) is sold during the lunar year, or exchanged for wealth of a different category, the zakah-year is cut off and a new year must be started.”

I say: This must be qualified: it applies only when the sale or exchange happens incidentally, not with the deliberate aim of evading zakah. It is related of some Ḥanafīs that, when the zakah-year was about to finish, one of them would donate the money to his wife, and once the year had ended he would reclaim it from her, since—under their view—the return of a gift is permissible with certain conditions. Whoever employs this stratagem, which some call a “legal device,” should, in my view, have the zakah taken from him together with half of his wealth, in accordance with the ḥadīth of Bahz ibn Ḥakīm cited in the book; for the trickster deserves this penalty even more than someone who refuses to pay without resorting to trickery. Reflect on this.

Refer also to what will appear later in the book under the heading, “Fleeing from Zakah.”

His statement under the heading “10. Disbursing It at the Time It Becomes Due”: al-Shāfiʿī and al-Bukhārī in al-Tārīkh transmit from ʿĀʾishah that the Prophet ﷺ said, “Charity has never mingled with any wealth without destroying it.”

I say: Its isnād is weak. Al-Shāfiʿī said in Badāʾiʿ al-Minan 1/242: “Muḥammad ibn ʿUthmān ibn Ṣafwān al-Jumaḥī narrated to us, from Hishām ibn ʿUrwah, from his father, from her.”

Al-Dhahabī said in al-Mīzān: “He is a shaykh of al-Humaydī.” Abū Ḥātim judged him “rejected in ḥadīth,” and al-Dhahabī counted this report among his rejected narrations.

Al-Mundhirī declared the ḥadīth weak in al-Targhīb, and al-Haythamī did likewise in al-Majmaʿ.