Zakat and Fasting in Al-Hawi al-Kabir

Al-Mawardi's treatment of zakah and fasting in Al-Hawi al-Kabir demonstrates the encyclopedic scope of the work — covering every significant legal question with reference to Al-Shafi'i's original rulings, the positions of subsequent Shafi'i scholars, and comparative analysis of the other schools' approaches.

The zakah chapter in Al-Hawi al-Kabir opens with an extensive discussion of the obligation's basis and its relationship to the other pillars of Islam. Al-Mawardi explains that zakah is distinguished from voluntary charity (sadaqah) by being obligatory, having fixed thresholds, specific categories of recipients, and a defined rate. The spiritual dimension — that zakah purifies the giver's wealth and soul (at-Tawbah 9:103) — is explained alongside the social dimension of wealth redistribution.

Al-Mawardi's treatment of zakah on monetary wealth is particularly detailed on the question of paper instruments and mercantile credit. While the classical texts do not address paper currency directly (it was not widely used in al-Mawardi's era), his discussion of goldsmith's receipts, commercial notes, and non-metallic monetary instruments provides important early analysis of how zakah law might extend to non-traditional monetary forms. His reasoning — that the function of serving as a medium of exchange is what creates the zakah obligation, not the physical form of the currency — laid groundwork for later scholars dealing with these questions.

For trade goods (tijarah), Al-Mawardi examines in detail the condition of trade intent (qasad at-tijarah). The Shafi'i school requires that goods be acquired with the specific intent to trade them — not merely that they are now being held for sale. He addresses cases where intent changes: a merchant who acquires goods for personal use and later decides to sell them must start a fresh hawl from the point of the change in intent. This protects against the manipulation of zakah obligations through shifts in declared intent.

On fasting, Al-Hawi al-Kabir's treatment is comprehensive. Al-Mawardi explains the Shafi'i position on moon-sighting in detail: the beginning of Ramadan is established by a trustworthy sighting or, in the case of a clouded sky, by a single reliable witness. The end of Ramadan (completion of thirty days, or sighting of the Shawwal moon) is treated with equal care. He addresses the Shafi'i position that moon-sightings are not universal — a sighting in one city does not obligate fasting in a city with a different horizon (a ruling that has become practically significant in the modern era of global Muslim communities).

The question of what constitutes the body cavity (jawf) for fasting purposes receives extensive analysis in Al-Hawi al-Kabir. Al-Mawardi examines various scenarios: eye drops entering the throat; water entering the ear; suppositories; injections (in the pre-modern sense of liquids inserted through a tube); and food that unintentionally enters the mouth and is swallowed. His analysis establishes a comprehensive framework for determining when something has reached the body cavity in a legally relevant sense, distinguishing between the main digestive cavity (stomach and intestines), the respiratory system, and the pathways connecting them.

Al-Mawardi's treatment of the voluntary fasts and their rulings concludes this chapter. He discusses the question of whether a voluntary fast may be broken without compensation — the Shafi'i position is that breaking a voluntary fast does not require qada (unlike breaking an obligatory fast), but that completing what one has begun is morally preferable unless there is a genuine reason to break it.