amount, paying zakat on each one according to the year that has elapsed over it; but if the nisab is completed through the second sum, he adds the first to it and pays zakat on both according to the second sum’s year.

If someone acquires ten dinars that remain with him for a month, two months, or longer, and thereafter acquires another ten and merges them, he must start a fresh lunar year for the combined twenty—and any merchandise he buys with them—beginning from the day he combined them.

It has also been said: should he use the twenty dinars to purchase goods and then, when the year of the first ten finishes, sell those goods for forty dinars, he pays one-half dinar—the zakat due on twenty dinars—on the first ten and their profit (another ten). When the year of the second ten is completed, he pays its zakat together with the zakat on its profit, again one-half dinar on the twenty. If, however, he sells the goods for less than forty dinars, no zakat is due until the year of the second ten is complete, because when less than forty is divided evenly between the two gains, the first share falls below the taxable threshold, so its zakat is deferred to the second year.

Whoever owns ten dinars, a full year elapses, and he then sells them for two hundred dirhams must pay zakat out of those dirhams. The same rule applies to anyone who possesses one hundred dirhams—or thereabouts, i.e., below the silver nisab—and, after a year has passed while they are in his possession, sells them for an amount of gold that reaches the nisab: he must pay zakat.

As for gains in livestock, they are always added to the original nisab at the completion of the lunar year—unlike cash. Thus, if a person acquires some livestock and later acquires more of the same kind, we consider the matter: if the first acquisition was itself a full nisab and a year has passed over it, he adds the second to it and pays zakat on both according to the first’s year. If the first did not amount to a nisab when its year ended, he joins it to the second and begins a new year from the day he acquired the second, whether or not the second on its own reaches the nisab, provided that the combined total does reach it.

The detailed regulations for zakat on livestock will be set out in their proper place later in the book, God willing.