Zakat and Fasting in Abu Shuja's Primer

The zakah and fasting chapters of Ghayat at-Taqrib continue Abu Shuja's approach of systematic enumeration — listing the categories, conditions, amounts, and rulings in the minimum words necessary for a student to identify and apply each ruling. Reading these chapters alongside a commentary reveals how much legal content can be compressed into a few paragraphs of carefully chosen Arabic.

The zakah chapter is organized around the five categories of zakatable property: monetary wealth (gold, silver, and trade goods), livestock (camels, cattle, sheep and goats), and agricultural produce. For each category, Abu Shuja' states the nisab threshold and the amount due. For gold: twenty mithqals, one-fortieth (2.5%) due. For silver: two hundred dirhams, one-fortieth due. For camels: five camels, one sheep due (rising by a table that Abu Shuja' states precisely). For cattle: thirty, one yearling due; forty, one two-year-old due. For sheep: forty, one sheep due.

The conditions that make property zakatable in the Shafi'i school are stated economically: the owner must be Muslim and free, the property must reach the nisab, a full lunar year (hawl) must pass over monetary wealth and livestock (not agricultural produce), and the property must be fully owned (milk tamm) — meaning not borrowed, mortgaged, or otherwise encumbered to the point of reducing net ownership below the nisab.

For agricultural produce, Abu Shuja' states the two amounts: one-tenth (10%) for rain-watered crops, one-twentieth (5%) for irrigated crops. This elegantly captures the prophetic ruling (al-Bukhari) on the distinction between the two irrigation types.

The chapter on sawm (fasting) covers the Ramadan fast with equal precision. Abu Shuja' states the conditions that make fasting obligatory: Islam, puberty, sanity, ability. He then states the two conditions of valid fasting: intention (made before Fajr of each day) and refraining from fast-breaking acts. The fast-breaking acts are grouped: food, drink, and anything similar that enters the stomach; sexual intercourse; and deliberate vomiting.

The categories of persons excused from fasting are enumerated: the traveler (permitted to break the fast and must make up the days), the sick person (if fasting would harm them — must make up the days), the pregnant or nursing woman (if fasting harms her or the child — both qada and fidyah in some cases), and the elderly who cannot fast (fidyah, no qada possible). Each category is stated in a phrase that identifies the qualifying condition.

The kaffarah for deliberately breaking the Ramadan fast through sexual intercourse is stated: free a slave; if unable, fast sixty consecutive days; if unable, feed sixty poor people. This hierarchical obligation, established by prophetic hadith, is one of the most serious expiation requirements in Islamic law and Abu Shuja' states it with the precision the subject demands.

The voluntary fasts are mentioned briefly: the six days of Shawwal, the day of Arafah, the day of Ashura, and the Monday-Thursday fast — each with its source in the Sunnah. Abu Shuja' also states the forbidden days: the two Eids and the three days of Tashriq — days on which fasting is prohibited even voluntarily, established by multiple authenticated hadiths.