The general purport of the Prophet’s statement—peace and blessings be upon him—“No alms-due is payable on wealth until a full year has elapsed over it” indicates that one sum of wealth may not be combined with another for Zakāt purposes except on the strength of explicit evidence. It seems that Abū Ḥanīfah, in this question, applied an analogy between ready money and livestock, building on a principle of his in this chapter: the completion of the year does not require the wealth to remain a full niṣāb throughout every moment of the year, but only that a niṣāb be present at the two ends of the year, with some portion of the capital subsisting during the interval. Thus, in his view, if a person owns a niṣāb at the beginning of the year, then part of it is lost so that it falls below a niṣāb, and later in the same year he acquires additional wealth that restores it to a niṣāb, Zakāt becomes obligatory. For the asset, in his estimation, has not completed its year in a different form; it has remained, in all its parts, a single and identical fund—indeed it has increased—while a niṣāb was present at both ends of the year.

The more apparent understanding, however, is that the year stipulated for Zakāt pertains only to a specific sum that neither increases nor diminishes—through profit, return, or anything else—for the wisdom behind the year is to show that the wealth is surplus and not needed. What stays unchanged with the owner for an entire year is, by definition, not essential to him; hence Zakāt is levied on it, for Zakāt is imposed solely on surplus assets.

Accordingly, whoever holds that the rationale for requiring the year is growth is bound to say that returns, over and above profits, are added to the principal and that the niṣāb must exist at the two ends of the year. If livestock liable to Zakāt is sold and, before the year’s end, replaced with livestock of the same type, Zakāt remains due. Such a position in effect adopts the two-ends-of-the-year criterion espoused by Abū Ḥanīfah and extends his analogy between the returns on cash and the offspring of livestock, as noted above.

Fourth Issue: Counting the Year in the Case of Debt (assuming Zakāt is obligatory on it)

One group holds that the year is reckoned from the moment the sum became a debt: Zakāt is paid for as many complete years as the debt has spanned—one year’s Zakāt if it has been outstanding for one year, and Zakāt for each year if it has remained for several.

A second group says that only a single year’s Zakāt is due, even if the debt has remained with the debtor for many years.

A third group maintains that a fresh year is counted only after the debt is collected.

Whoever obligates Zakāt for every year the debt has remained thus likens the debt to wealth already in hand. As for the view that limits Zakāt to a single year regardless of how many years pass, I know of no supporting proof for it at the present time, for as long as it remains a debt one must either maintain that Zakāt is due on it or deny that outright. If no Zakāt is due, then the matter ends and a new year begins once the money is received; and if Zakāt is due, it must either be conditioned on the lapse of a full year or not—there is no third alternative.