The third question concerns young camels: Is zakāt due on them, and, if so, what is the owner required to give?

Some scholars said that zakāt is indeed obligatory on them, while others maintained that it is not.

The root of the dispute is whether the generic term “camels” (al-ibil) in the revealed texts includes the immature animals or excludes them.

Those who denied any zakāt on young camels—chief among them Abū Ḥanīfah and a group of the Kufans—argued from the ḥadīth of Suwayd ibn Ghafalah, who said:

“The Prophet’s alms-collector came to us. I approached him, sat with him, and heard him say: ‘It is part of my mandate that I do not take a suckling animal, that I do not combine what is scattered, nor separate what is gathered.’ He added: A man then brought him a large, high-humped she-camel and he refused to accept it.”

Those who affirmed the obligation differed over what the owner must do. One group held that he must purchase an animal of the required age-class. Another group—more consistent with analogy—said that the collector should simply take from the young stock itself. A parallel difference arose with respect to young cattle and the kids of sheep.

[Chapter Three: The Niṣāb for Cattle and the Amount Due]

The majority of scholars hold that in every thirty head of cattle one tabīʿ (a year-old calf) is due, and in every forty a musinnah (a two-year-old cow).

A second group said: For every twenty head of cattle one sheep is due; once they reach thirty, a tabīʿ is due.

Others reported: When the herd reaches twenty-five, one cow is due; up to seventy-five, two cows; once it exceeds that, then when it reaches one hundred and twenty, one cow is due for every forty head. This was related from Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib.

The jurists of the provincial centers disagreed over the interval between forty and sixty. Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, al-Thawrī, and several others held that nothing additional is due on what exceeds forty until the herd reaches sixty. When it reaches sixty, two tabīʿs are due; up to seventy, a musinnah and a tabīʿ; up to eighty, two musinnahs; up to ninety, three tabīʿs; up to one hundred, two tabīʿs and a musinnah; and so on thereafter, reckoning one tabīʿ for every thirty and one musinnah for every forty.

The reason for their disagreement over the niṣāb is that the ḥadīth of Muʿādh is not unanimously deemed authentic; for this reason the two Shaykhs (al-Bukhārī and Muslim) did not include it in their collections.