five dirhams; and that if one possesses gold amounting to twenty mithqals, valued at two hundred dirhams, then Zakat is obligatory upon it, except for what has been disputed regarding the view of Al-Hasan.

446 - Issue: Abu al-Qasim said: "There is no Zakat on anything less than [two hundred dirhams], unless he possesses gold or trade goods in his ownership, by which it [the value] is completed."

The totality of this is that the nisab (minimum threshold) of silver is two hundred dirhams. There is no disagreement among the scholars of Islam regarding this, and it has been clarified by the Sunnah that we have narrated, by the praise of Allah. The dirhams by which the nisab is reckoned are the dirhams of which every ten weigh seven mithqals by the weight of gold, and every dirham is half a mithqal and one-fifth of a mithqal. These are the Islamic dirhams by which the thresholds of Zakat, the amount of jizya (poll tax), blood money, the threshold for theft-related amputation, and other things are measured. In the early period of Islam, there were two types of dirhams: black ones (sud) and Tabari ones. The black ones were eight daniqs, and the Tabari ones were four daniqs. They were reconciled in Islam and were made into two equal dirhams, with six daniqs in each dirham. The Umayyads did that, and thus three aspects gathered in them: first, that every ten weigh seven. Second, that it is a fair balance between the small and the large. Third, that it conforms to the Sunnah of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and his dirham with which he determined the legal measurements. There is no difference in this between raw bullion and minted currency. Whenever the nisab falls short of that, there is no Zakat upon it, regardless of whether the shortfall is large or small. This is the apparent view of the speech of al-Khiraqi and the school of thought of al-Shafi'i, Ishaq, and Ibn al-Mundhir, based on the apparent meaning of his saying (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him): "There is no sadaqah on anything less than five awaq." An uqiyyah is forty dirhams without disagreement, thus amounting to two hundred dirhams.