The third question concerns someone who dies while still owing zakāh.

The fourth concerns a person who sells standing crops or fruit after zakāh has already become due on them: on whom, then, does the obligation fall? The same question applies if he gives them away as a gift.

As for the first issue—namely, when a person separates the zakāh and the separated portion is subsequently lost—scholars have taken several positions:

• One group said that the obligation is discharged.

• A second group held that he remains liable for it until he places it in its proper hands.

• A third group distinguished between separating it after there was ample opportunity to pay and separating it at the very moment the obligation and the ability to pay coincided. They said: if he delayed for several days after payment was possible and obligatory, he is liable; but if he paid immediately when it first became due and was not negligent, he is not liable. This is the well-known position of Mālik.

• A fourth group maintained: if he was negligent he must make it good, but if he was not negligent he pays zakāh only on what remains. This is the view of Abū Thawr and al-Shāfiʿī.

• A fifth group said instead that the amount lost is regarded as having gone out of the total wealth, and thereafter the poor and the owner become joint partners in what remains, each according to his rightful share—just as two partners remain partners in the residue when part of their joint property is destroyed.

Accordingly, five opinions emerge:

1. He is never liable, without qualification.
2. He is always liable, without qualification.
3. He is liable if negligent, and not liable if not.
4. If negligent he is liable; if not, he pays zakāh on what remains.
5. The poor and the owner share what remains as partners.

As for the second issue: when part of the wealth is lost after the obligation has arisen but before the owner has been able to pay the zakāh, some scholars said he should pay zakāh on what is left.

Others said: the condition of the poor and that of the owner is like two partners who lose part of their shared capital.

The root of their disagreement is whether zakāh is to be likened to debts—meaning that the right attaches to the person’s liability (dhimmah) rather than to the very property—or to rights that attach to the asset itself and not to the debtor’s liability, as in the case of trustees and the like.

Those who likened the zakāh payer to a trustee said: if the separated portion is destroyed, nothing further is due from him.

Those who likened him to a debtor said: he remains liable.

Those who distinguished between negligence and no negligence treated him like a trustee in all respects, since a trustee is liable only when negligent.

As for the view that, when there is no negligence, he pays zakāh only on what remains, it likens the case of partial loss after separation to that of partial loss before zakāh becomes due: when the obligation arises he pays only on what he actually possesses, and here likewise he pays zakāh only on the wealth that still exists.

The ultimate reason for the divergence, then, is the shifting analogy of the zakāh payer between the statuses of debtor, trustee, partner, and one whose property partially perished before liability arose. However, once zakāh has become due and he is able to pay but delays until some of the wealth is lost, they are—so far as I can determine—unanimous that he is liable, except with regard to livestock according to those who hold that zakāh on livestock is not fully due until the collector arrives at the completion of the year; this is Mālik’s position.