Cattle are treated like mixed-ownership sheep. Thus, if one man owns one hundred head of cattle and another forty, and their herds are intermingled, the collector assesses them as a single herd and the partners then reimburse one another: the one hundred bear their share, and the forty bear theirs.
If there are one hundred and twenty camels belonging to two partners—five owned by one of them and the remainder by the other—the zakāt due is two ḥiqahs. Suppose, by way of illustration, that the two ḥiqahs are worth two hundred dirhams. The two hundred dirhams are divided into twenty-four parts; because the owner of the five camels holds one-twenty-fourth of the herd, he must pay one-twenty-fourth of the two hundred dirhams.
If one partner owns five camels and the other nine, Mālik expressed two opinions:
- each of them is liable for one sheep;
- two sheep are due altogether, which they then apportion between themselves according to the number of camels each owns—and Mālik ultimately adopted this second view.
The meaning of the Prophet’s ﷺ saying, “Do not separate what is combined nor combine what is separate out of fear of the obligatory charity,” is that three men may each own forty sheep, so that one ewe is due from each of them. When the collector approaches, they merge their flocks so that only a single ewe will be taken from all of them; they were therefore forbidden to do so.
His words, “and do not separate what is combined,” also apply to two partners who each own one hundred and one sheep, for which three ewes are due. Yet when the collector arrives they divide their flock so that there is not upon each of them