Zakat and Fasting in Al-Muhalla

Ibn Hazm's treatment of zakah in Al-Muhalla stays strictly within the bounds of what the primary texts explicitly establish. He covers the same basic categories as the four Sunni schools — gold, silver, trade goods, crops, and livestock — but his analysis of each category stays close to the explicit texts without the analogical extensions that some schools develop.

For zakah on agricultural produce, Ibn Hazm accepts the hadith 'On rain-watered produce, a tenth; on irrigated produce, a twentieth' as establishing zakah on whatever the hadith calls 'produce' — which he interprets broadly as any crop grown from the earth. This position aligns him with the Hanafi school's broader scope against the more restricted interpretation of the Shafi'i and Maliki schools. But unlike the Hanafi school, he arrives at this position not through analogical reasoning from the 'illah (legal cause) of crops but from the literal scope of the hadith's language.

On zakah on livestock, Ibn Hazm accepts the detailed tables transmitted from the prophetic practice through multiple hadith chains. He is careful to restrict zakah to the livestock explicitly mentioned — camels, cattle, sheep, and goats — without extending it by analogy to other domesticated animals such as horses (though some hadiths address horses specifically). The restriction to explicitly mentioned animals reflects the Dhahiri rejection of qiyas.

For Ramadan fasting, Ibn Hazm's treatment is largely consistent with the four Sunni schools on the major rulings. He affirms the obligation, the conditions, and the main nullifiers — eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse — based on the explicit Quranic text (2:187). He presents interesting positions on the nullifiers debated among the four schools: his strict textual approach leads him to accept only what is explicitly established in the hadith literature as nullifiers, rejecting some nullifiers accepted by certain schools on analogical grounds.

A notable Dhahiri position on fasting concerns deliberate eating during a Ramadan fast while believing it to be permitted — the error of a new Muslim, for example, who did not know that eating during daylight hours in Ramadan is prohibited. Ibn Hazm argues from the hadith of the shepherd who was told by the Prophet that his mistaken eating did not break his fast, extending this to all cases of genuine ignorance. The Hanafi, Maliki, and Shafi'i schools require qada' in such cases; Ibn Hazm's position is more lenient based on the principle that obligation requires knowledge.

Ibn Hazm's discussion of fasting's spiritual dimension reflects the Dhahiri school's understanding that strict textual fidelity in legal matters is itself a spiritual act. He cites the hadith qudsi: 'Fasting is Mine, and I reward for it; he abandons his desire and food for My sake' (al-Bukhari, Muslim). This understanding of fasting as a purely divine-human act — with no social visibility and only Allah as witness — captures the essence of why fasting holds its unique place among the pillars of Islam.