of two kinds: those obliged to pay zakat—although, according to the majority of scholars, zakat may be due from someone who is also permitted to receive it—and those not obliged to pay it.
People in either category may have a surplus beyond their obligatory expenses. These are the ones of whom Allah says:
“They ask you what they should spend. Say, ‘Whatever is surplus.’”
They may instead have no surplus. Those whose provision is just sufficient for their subsistence are wealthy insofar as they have no need of others, but poor insofar as they have nothing extra to give in charity.
The poor enter Paradise half a day before the wealthy only because they have no surplus wealth for whose disbursement and expenditure they must account. Anyone without a surplus belongs to this group, even if not eligible to receive zakat. Yet those who possess surplus wealth, if they use it well, may attain a higher rank after entering Paradise than many of the poor who entered before them, just as the wealthy among the prophets and the steadfastly truthful, among the foremost and others, rank above the poor who are below them.
This is why the poor said:
“The wealthy have carried off the rewards.”
And when the wealthy matched them in bodily acts of worship and surpassed them through acts of worship involving wealth, it was said:
“That is the bounty of Allah, which He grants to whom He wills.”
This, then, is what “poor” means in the usage of the Quran and Sunnah.