Zakat al-Fitr is obligatory upon every Muslim—male or female, young or old, free or enslaved. This ruling is based on the hadith of Ibn ʿUmar cited earlier, where the Messenger of Allah ﷺ made Zakat al-Fitr mandatory for the slave and the free, the male and the female, and the young and the old among the Muslims; the verb farada (“made obligatory”) here means he bound and required it.

That same hadith also clarifies both the amount owed by each person and the type of food that must be given: the amount is one saʿ, equivalent to four mudd, and the type is whatever constitutes the staple food of the land—whether wheat, barley, dates, raisins, dried yogurt, or any other item that the people customarily eat and predominantly use, such as rice, corn, and the like. Each region gives what its inhabitants ordinarily consume.

The Prophet ﷺ further specified the time for paying it, commanding that it be delivered before the ʿEid prayer. The optimal time therefore begins at sunset on the eve of ʿEid. Nevertheless, it is permissible to pay it a day or two in advance, for al-Bukhari reports that the Companions would hand over their Zakat al-Fitr one or two days before the festival, and they were unanimously agreed upon that practice.

Paying it on the day of ʿEid itself, before the prayer, is best. If someone misses this window and delays the payment until after the ʿEid prayer, he must still discharge it as a belated obligation, for Ibn ʿAbbas said: “Whoever gives it before the prayer, it is an accepted zakat; and whoever gives it after the prayer—”