Fasting, Zakat, and Hajj

The middle chapters of the Risalah cover the remaining three pillars of Islam: fasting (sawm), zakah (obligatory alms), and hajj (pilgrimage). Ibn Abi Zayd's treatment is characteristically concise but covers the essential rulings in enough detail to guide ordinary Muslims in fulfilling these obligations correctly according to the Maliki school.

Fasting in Ramadan

Ibn Abi Zayd explains that the Ramadan fast is obligatory on every adult Muslim who is sane, healthy, resident, and not in a state of menstruation or post-natal bleeding. He specifies the acts that invalidate the fast: eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and deliberate vomiting. He also covers the Maliki position that swallowing saliva does not break the fast even in large amounts, but that swallowing phlegm intentionally does break it according to the Maliki school's preferred position.

The Maliki school's distinctive ruling on those who break the fast deliberately without valid excuse — the obligation of kaffarah (expiation) requiring freeing a slave, fasting sixty consecutive days, or feeding sixty poor people — is presented clearly. Ibn Abi Zayd also addresses the permitted exemptions: the traveler, the sick person, the pregnant or nursing woman who fears harm to herself or her child, and the elderly person who cannot fast. Each exempt person must make up missed days or, in the case of permanent inability, pay a fidyah (ransom) of feeding one poor person per missed day.

zakah in the Maliki School

On zakah, the Risalah covers the main categories on which zakah is obligatory — gold, silver, trade goods, livestock, and agricultural produce — with the thresholds (nisab) and rates for each. The Maliki school's distinctive position on agricultural zakah is that it applies to all irrigated and rain-watered crops above a certain quantity, including olives, dried fruits, and several other categories that other schools do not include.

A notable Maliki position on zakah distribution is that unlike the Shafi'i school, Maliki jurisprudence does not require distribution among all eight Quranic categories simultaneously. The one distributing zakah may give all of it to one category if that is where the need is greatest, and may even give it to a single individual from that category. This greater flexibility made the Maliki school's zakah rules more practically applicable in the varied social contexts of North and West Africa.

Hajj

Ibn Abi Zayd's treatment of hajj covers its obligation, conditions, pillars, and the timing of its rites. The Maliki school regards the essential pillar of hajj as the standing at Arafat (wuquf), and holds that any of the time between midday on the ninth of Dhul-Hijja and the dawn of the tenth is valid for the standing, though combining part of the day and part of the night is strongly recommended to follow the Sunnah. The Maliki school has a distinctive position on the tawaf: it considers the farewell tawaf (tawaf al-wada') obligatory for all who are not Makkan residents, unlike the Shafi'i school which considers it obligatory and the Hanafi school which holds that missing it requires only a compensatory sacrifice.