Zakat, Fasting, and Hajj in Al-Mudawwanah

Al-Mudawwanah's treatment of the remaining pillars of Islam — zakah, fasting, and hajj — preserves Malik's original positions on these foundational obligations, including several that are distinctive to the Maliki school and reflect the intellectual environment of Medina in the second Islamic century.

On zakah, Al-Mudawwanah records Malik's positions on the categories of wealth subject to obligatory almsgiving and the conditions under which zakah becomes due. Ibn al-Qasim transmits Malik's view on the nisab for gold (twenty dinars) and silver (two hundred dirhams), the 2.5% rate that applies after a full lunar year, and the conditions governing livestock zakah. Malik's approach to zakah on trade goods is also recorded: goods held for trade are assessed at market value, and zakah is paid on the total if it meets the nisab threshold.

A particularly significant ruling in Al-Mudawwanah concerns zakah al-fitr (the obligatory end-of-Ramadan charity). Malik's position — preserved through Ibn al-Qasim — is that zakah al-fitr is obligatory on every free Muslim who has surplus beyond his needs and the needs of his dependents on the night of Eid. It must be paid in the local staple food (Malik specified various grains, dates, and similar items) at the rate of one sa' per person. Al-Mudawwanah records Malik's insistence that zakah al-fitr be paid before the Eid prayer — paying it afterward is still valid but represents a deviation from the sunnah.

For fasting, Al-Mudawwanah preserves Malik's rulings through Ibn al-Qasim's responses to Sahnun's questions about the conditions, invalidating acts, and expiations related to the Ramadan fast. Malik's position on the intention — that it must be formed each night before dawn for the following day's fast — is recorded here. His rulings on acts that break the fast are precise: intentional eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse break the fast; accidental eating or drinking while forgetting one is fasting does not.

Malik's positions on the expiation (kaffara) required for deliberate intercourse during the Ramadan fast are detailed in Al-Mudawwanah. The three sequential options — freeing a slave, fasting sixty consecutive days, or feeding sixty poor persons — are presented in their order of priority, with Malik's views on whether a person incapable of one option may move to the next without establishing inability.

On hajj, Al-Mudawwanah contains some of the most detailed early Maliki rulings on pilgrimage. Malik's positions on the conditions for hajj to become obligatory (freedom, adulthood, sanity, ability including financial and physical capacity), the three modes of performance (ifrad, tamattu', and qiran), and the rites of ihram, tawaf, sa'y, standing at Arafah, and the remaining rites are recorded through Ibn al-Qasim.

Malik's view that the sa'y between Safa and Marwa is an obligatory rite (rukn) of hajj — not merely a required act whose omission can be compensated by a sacrifice — is an important Maliki position reflected in Al-Mudawwanah. Similarly, Malik's rulings on the prohibited acts during ihram, the penalties (fidyah and dam) for violations, and the conditions under which a person prevented from completing hajj (muhsar) may exit the state of ihram are all addressed with characteristic Maliki precision.

The directness of Al-Mudawwanah's format — questions from Sahnun, answers from Ibn al-Qasim derived from Malik — gives these rulings a freshness and authority that has made the text indispensable for understanding the Maliki school's foundational positions. Students who engage with Al-Mudawwanah are reading law as it was actually taught, debated, and transmitted in the madrasas of early Islamic Africa and Andalusia.