If the lapse of the year is made a condition, then the number of years must be reckoned—unless one were to claim that each time a year ends and the owner is unable to pay, the liability for that particular year is dropped. Zakāt becomes obligatory only when two conditions coincide: the asset itself is present and a full lunar year has elapsed. Once those two are met, nothing remains but the right pertaining to the last year alone.

Mālik likens this to trade merchandise: in his view no Zakāt is due on such goods until they are sold, even if they remain in the owner’s hands for many years. He draws a similar comparison with livestock when the collector (sāʿī) fails to come for several years and then arrives to find that time has passed; according to Mālik the herd is then assessed only on what is currently present. The reasoning is that when earlier years expired the owner could not pay because, for Mālik, the collector’s arrival is a necessary condition along with the completion of the year. Hence the liability for each expired year falls away, and in the ensuing years the herd is taxed on whatever remains of it, whether the amount due thereby is less or more, so long as it is property on which Zakāt is required. This ruling runs contrary to strict analogy; Mālik based it solely on established practice.

Al-Shāfiʿī, however, holds the owner liable, for in his view the arrival of the collector is not a condition for the obligation itself. On the same principle, anyone who believes it impermissible to pay Zakāt except by handing it to the Imām—yet the Imām is absent, or a just Imām is absent for those who require the ruler’s justice—and the wealth is subsequently lost after the year has elapsed but before payment could be made, incurs no liability.

Mālik further divides debts into three categories:

1. Debts on which only one year’s Zakāt is paid, such as trade debts.
2. Debts from which a fresh year is counted, such as debts arising from inheritance.
3. The managing partner’s debt (dayn al-mudīr).
   A full exposition of his doctrine on debts, however, is not our purpose here.

Fifth Issue
The lunar year with respect to trade goods
This has already been discussed under the heading of the niṣāb for trade goods.

Sixth Issue — Increments of livestock
In this matter Mālik’s position differs from his view regarding returns on ready money, for he attaches the increment to the principal herd when the principal constitutes a niṣāb, just as Abū Ḥanīfah does with profits on silver coins and with livestock offspring. Abū Ḥanīfah’s ruling on all increments is one and the same: they are added to the principal whenever the principal is a niṣāb, whether the increment is livestock offspring or cash profit; for him, profits and offspring are alike. Mālik, by contrast, gives profits and offspring one ruling while distinguishing between increments on ready money and those on livestock.

Al-Shāfiʿī treats profits and other increments alike, each being subject to a year of its own; as for the increments and offspring of livestock, they are considered one with the principal herd, provided the herd itself meets the niṣāb.

Such, then, is the upshot of the views of these three jurists. Mālik appears to have differentiated between livestock and ready money only in deference to ʿUmar, for strict analogy would treat them the same—profit is to offspring as increment is to increment. The report from ʿUmar states that he ordered the young lambs to be counted along with the flock but that nothing be taken from them; this ḥadīth has already been cited in the chapter on niṣāb.