a full lunar year has passed over them; at that point five dirhams are payable. Whatever is added over that is assessed at one dirham for every forty dirhams. With regard to gold, for every four dinars in excess of twenty dinars one dirham is due, until the amount reaches forty dinars; once it does, one dinar is due for every forty dinars, while on every twenty-four [dinars] the obligation is half a dinar and one dirham.”

As for the text that appears to counter this report, it is the Prophet’s ﷺ statement: “No zakāh is due on less than five awāq of silver.” Its implied meaning is that anything above that threshold, whether little or much, is subject to zakāh.

Their vacillation between the two analogies—livestock and grain—may also be noted. The explicit ruling on fractional increments (awqāṣ) occurs with livestock, and there is unanimous agreement that no such increments apply to grain. Hence, whoever likens silver and gold to livestock says: “Fractional increments apply to them as well,” whereas whoever likens them to grain says: “There is no such increment.”

Issue Three
Combining gold and silver for the purpose of zakāh
According to Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah and a number of other scholars, dirhams are combined with dinars; once their aggregate reaches a full nisāb, zakāh becomes obligatory. Al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Thawr and Dāwūd, however, held that gold is not combined with silver, nor silver with gold.

The root of their disagreement lies in whether each metal is subject to zakāh in its own right, or whether the liability arises from a common factor that embraces them both—namely, their being, as the jurists say, the chief forms of capital and the standard for valuations. Whoever judged each metal on its own basis—and for that reason set a distinct nisāb for each—maintained that they are two separate genera; one is not combined with the other, just as cattle are not combined with sheep. Whoever focused on the shared factor we have mentioned obliged combining one with the other. The more evident principle would seem to be that legal rulings diverge where names and substances diverge, even if their benefits appear to coincide. This is the approach adopted by Mālik—may Allah have mercy on him—both in this chapter and in the chapter on ribā.

Those who permitted combining the two differed over how that combination is to be calculated. Mālik required a fixed exchange rate, counting each dinar as ten dirhams, as was the ancient practice. Thus, a person who owns ten dinars and one hundred dirhams is liable for zakāh on them, and may discharge the obligation of one kind from the other. Others among this group said that the combination is based on market value at the time zakāh falls due. Hence, if someone possesses, for example, one hundred dirhams together with nine mithqāls of gold that are worth one hundred dirhams, zakāh is obligatory on both. Likewise, anyone who has one hundred dirhams whose value equals eleven mithqāls and nine-tenths of a mithqāl must also pay zakāh on both. Among those who held this view was Abū