begging to the point of achieving sustenance or sufficiency. Furthermore, need is poverty, and wealth is its opposite; so whoever is in need is poor and thus enters into the generality of the text, while whoever has achieved sufficiency enters into the generality of the texts that forbid it. The first hadith contains some weakness. Furthermore, it is possible that begging is forbidden while the taking of charity is not, if it comes to him without begging; for what is mentioned in it is the prohibition of begging, so we shall limit ourselves to that. Al-Hasan and Abu 'Ubayd said: Wealth is the possession of an uqiyya, which is forty dirhams, based on what Abu Sa'id al-Khudri narrated, saying: The Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) said: "Whoever asks while he possesses the value of an uqiyya has persisted in begging." The uqiyya at the time of the Messenger of Allah (peace be upon him) was forty dirhams. Narrated by Abu Dawud (16). The jurists (Ashab al-Ra'y) said: The wealth that necessitates Zakat is that which prevents receiving it, and it is the ownership of a nisab (threshold) upon which Zakat becomes due, whether it be currency, trade goods, livestock (sa'ima), or others; because of the Prophet's (peace be upon him) statement to Mu'adh: "Inform them that they have a charity to be taken from their rich and given back to their poor" (17). He designated the rich as those upon whom Zakat is obligatory; this indicates that whoever is obligated to pay it is wealthy, and whoever is not obligated to pay it is not wealthy, therefore he is poor, and Zakat is paid to him because of his statement: "And given back to their poor." Also, because the thing that necessitates Zakat is wealth (18), and the basic principle is the absence of overlap. And because one who does not possess a nisab is not obligated to pay Zakat, so he is not prevented from receiving it, just like one who possesses less than fifty and has nothing that suffices him. Thus, the disagreement between us and them arises in three matters: First, that the wealth that prevents one from receiving Zakat is different from the wealth that makes it obligatory according to us. The evidence for this is the hadith of Ibn Mas'ud, which is more specific than their hadith, so it must be given precedence. Moreover, their hadith indicates the wealth that necessitates it, and our hadith