The reason for their disagreement over the nisāb of gold is that nothing sound has been established from the Prophet ﷺ on the matter, unlike the clearly authenticated material concerning the nisāb of silver.

As for the report transmitted by al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmārah, from ʿAlī — may Allah be pleased with him — that the Prophet ﷺ said:

“Pay the zakāh of gold: from every twenty dinars, half a dinar,”

most scholars do not deem it obligatory to act upon this ḥadīth, because al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmārah is its sole transmitter.

Anyone who did not accept the authenticity of that narration relied instead on consensus, namely their agreement that zakāh becomes due at forty dinars.

Mālik, however, based his ruling on the practice that had taken root, and for that reason he states in the Muwaṭṭaʾ: “The Sunnah about which there is no disagreement among us is that zakāh is due on twenty dinars just as it is due on two hundred dirhams.”

Those who made zakāh obligatory on amounts of gold below forty dinars by referring to the dirham standard argued that, since gold and silver constitute a single genus, silver should be treated as the principal reference because an explicit text exists for it, while gold should follow silver in value, not in weight. This applies only in areas that fall outside the point of unanimous agreement.

They also cited the view that the term riqqah encompasses both gold and silver, and pointed to certain reports that state:

“No zakāh is due on less than five awāq of riqqah.”

Issue Two

Their disagreement over the increment above the nisāb is as follows. The majority say that whatever weight of silver exceeds two hundred dirhams is subject to zakāh at the same rate, namely one quarter of one tenth. This is the position of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Yūsuf and Muḥammad (the two companions of Abū Ḥanīfah), Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal, and many others.

A group of scholars — most of them Iraqis — maintain that nothing is due on the amount exceeding two hundred dirhams until it reaches a further forty dirhams; once it does, one quarter of one tenth is payable, i.e., one dirham. This was the view of Abū Ḥanīfah, Zufar, and a number of their companions.

The cause of their disagreement is threefold: (1) their differing judgements on the soundness of the ḥadīth of al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmārah, (2) the counter-evidence implied by other textual indications, and (3) their hesitation between two canonical analogies in this chapter that diverge on the point at hand — livestock and grain.

As for the ḥadīth of al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAmmārah, he relates it from Abū Isḥāq, from ʿĀṣim ibn Ḍamrah, from ʿAlī, from the Prophet ﷺ, who said:

“I have exempted you from the charity on horses and slaves; therefore, bring the one-quarter of one-tenth from the riqqah: five dirhams out of every two hundred dirhams, and from every twenty dinars half a dinar, and no zakāh is due on two hundred dirhams until …"