Allah, devour people’s wealth unjustly, and consent to being taken as lords besides Allah should neither be fought nor have the jizya collected from them, even though it is collected from ordinary people who cause less harm to religion and possess less wealth? No one who understands what he is saying would say this. The confusion arose only because the word “monk” is ambiguous and has several meanings. We have explained that the transmitted report is qualified and restricted in scope, and that it clarifies the report traced back to the Prophet on this matter. The scholars agree that the reason for the prohibition is what we have explained.

The jizya is therefore collected from those described here, without any doubt or disagreement among the leading scholars. It is to be taken from them, and no Muslim land conquered by force and subjected to the jizya may lawfully be left in their possession. Accordingly, scholars of the established schools—the Hanafīs, Mālikīs, Shāfiʿīs, and Hanbalīs—have not disputed that Egypt’s land was subject to kharāj (land tax). This is established by the authentic hadith in Sahīh Muslim, in which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“Iraq will withhold its dirhams and qafīz measures, Syria will withhold its mudd measures and dinars, and Egypt will withhold its irdabb measures and dirhams, and you will return to where you began.”

However, when the Muslims grew in number, they changed the assessment of the lands of al-Sawād, in the early Abbasid period, from a fixed land tax to a share of the produce. Likewise, they changed the arrangement in Egypt until they themselves received its revenues, as is the case today; hence the land tax was lifted from it. By the consensus of the Muslims, land of this kind may not be made an endowment for