Chapter: Zakat on the Produce of the Land
He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked:
What tithe is due on grain, and in what amount? Is it payable by the owner, the farmer, or both?
He answered:
All praise is due to Allah, Lord of the worlds.
The minimum threshold is five wasqs. One wasq is sixty sāʿs according to the measure of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. When Baghdad was founded, the imams determined that the Prophet’s sāʿ equalled five and one-third Iraqi ratls as measured at that time. Thus, the threshold amounts to one thousand six hundred Iraqi ratls.
At that time, the Iraqi ratl was ninety mithqāls: one hundred and twenty-eight dirhams and four-sevenths of a dirham. Its weight was subsequently increased to one hundred and thirty dirhams, then increased again to one hundred and forty-four. Some later jurists mistakenly supposed that one or the other of these was the ratl the imams had used in determining that measure.
Accordingly, its amount in Damascene ratls, each equivalent to six hundred dirhams, is