their dependents for one year.
3. A zakah worker: such as a collector (1) or a treasurer; he is given the amount of his wage.
4. Those whose hearts are to be reconciled: a leader obeyed by his clan, in whose case there is hope that he will embrace Islam, or whose harm may be averted, or whose faith may be strengthened by the gift, or through whose influence a peer might accept Islam; he is given whatever will secure that reconciliation whenever the need exists.
5. A contractual slave (mukātab); likewise a Muslim prisoner of war may be ransomed from the zakah funds, and it is permissible to purchase a slave with zakah money and set him free.
6. A debtor: one who has incurred debt to reconcile disputing parties—even if he is personally affluent—or for himself while poor (2); he is given what will clear his debt (3), just like the contractual slave.
7. A combatant in the path of Allah who receives no state stipend (4); he is given what he needs for his campaign, and the same ruling applies to a poor person performing his obligatory Hajj or ʿumrah.
8. A stranded traveler who is cut off from his resources outside his homeland; he is given enough to reach his country.

The zakah may be discharged by giving the entire amount to a single person, including a relative who is neither an ancestor nor a descendant and whom the payer is not obliged to support.

Zakah may not be given to a member of the Prophet’s family or their freedmen, to a poor woman married to a wealthy husband who maintains her, to a slave who is not a zakah worker, or to one’s own spouse.

If the payer gives zakah to someone he presumed to be eligible and later discovers that he was not, the payment is not discharged—except in the case of a wealthy person whom he mistakenly thought was poor.