Tamer Elgamil ·
A family with 90 grams of 21-karat jewellery owes zakat under Dar al-Ifta's threshold and owes nothing under the strict pure-gold reading. The gap is 12.5 percent.
A family owns 90 grams of 21-karat jewellery and nothing else that zakat touches. Do they owe anything?
Under the threshold Egypt's Dar al-Ifta publishes, yes. Under the older reading of the same hadith, no. That gap is not a rounding error, and it is not one side being wrong. It is two defensible ways of turning a seventh-century weight into a number of grams.
The threshold has a name: the nisab. It is the minimum wealth a person must hold before zakat is due at all. Below it, nothing is owed. Above it, 2.5 percent is.
Dar al-Ifta's own fatwa on the subject is unusually open about its history. The classical figure it quotes is twenty mithqal of gold, which it puts at 85 grams of 23.5-karat metal, so close to pure. The same fatwa then records that the institution changed the standard it applies, moving from 23.5 karat down to 21 karat, and says why in plain words: in consideration of the poor.
That lower standard is the one Egyptians meet today. The nisab is the market value of 85 grams of 21-karat gold, priced on the day the zakat is worked out.
A second Dar al-Ifta fatwa sets out the reasoning. It is worth reading, because it is an argument rather than a shortcut.
Islamweb's fatwa department states the competing rule in a line: the nisab is measured on the pure gold inside a piece, not on what the piece weighs on the scale. Its method is simple. Multiply the grams by the karat, divide by 24, and compare the answer to about 85 grams.
Put the Egyptian household's jewellery through that. 21-karat gold is 87.5 percent pure, so 85 grams of it holds about 74.4 grams of pure gold. That falls short. To reach 85 grams of pure gold using 21-karat jewellery you need roughly 97 grams of it, because 85 divided by 0.875 is 97.1.
So the Egyptian threshold sits one eighth, about 12.5 percent, below the strict pure-gold one. For a family holding 90 grams, that single gap decides the answer.
| Reading of the nisab | 21-karat grams needed |
|---|---|
| Dar al-Ifta: 85 g priced as 21-karat | 85 |
| Pure-gold equivalent: 85 g of 24-karat | about 97 |
The mithqal is a historical weight, and scholars reconstruct it slightly differently. Twenty mithqal comes to 85 grams under the conversion Egyptian fatwa practice uses, and to 87.48 grams under the one Islamic Relief publishes.
Neither is a mistake. It is the same coin weighed on two honest reconstructions of the same scale.
Zakat has a second, older threshold set in silver: 200 dirhams, which Islamic Relief gives as 612.36 grams.
In the Prophet's time the two thresholds were close in value. They are nowhere near close now. Silver has fallen a long way behind gold over fourteen centuries, so the silver nisab today is worth a small fraction of the gold one.
That has produced a live split. Islamic Relief notes that most scholars it follows advise using the silver figure, on the reasoning that a lower threshold brings more payers in and sends more zakat to people who need it. Others hold that the gold figure is what was applied to gold-type wealth in the first place, and that switching to silver because it yields a smaller number changes a ruling for a reason the texts never gave. Egyptian practice applies the gold figure to gold.
None of these positions is fringe, and none of them is settled. Scholars still disagree, so a household is choosing between live opinions, not between right and wrong.
What is worth avoiding is treating the choice as an annual one. Picking whichever standard happens to fall below your holding this year, then switching next year, is not what any of these positions exists to do. Choose one, understand why you chose it, and stay with it.
The weights and purities above do not move. The pound figures do, every day. The zakat calculator and the live 21-karat price carry the current numbers.
Twenty mithqal. Egyptian fatwa practice converts that to 85 grams, while Islamic Relief publishes 87.48 grams. The difference is not a dispute about the ruling; scholars simply reconstruct the historical mithqal weight slightly differently.
21-karat, priced at the 21-karat market rate on the day zakat is worked out. Its own fatwa records that the institution moved down from an earlier 23.5-karat standard, and gives the reason as consideration for the poor.
About 12.5 percent. 21-karat gold is 87.5 percent pure, so 85 grams of it holds roughly 74.4 grams of pure gold. Reaching 85 grams of pure gold with 21-karat jewellery would take about 97 grams of it.
Silver has fallen far behind gold in value since the Prophet's era, so the silver threshold is much lower today. Islamic Relief notes that most scholars it follows advise the silver figure, because a lower threshold brings more payers in. Others hold the gold figure is what applies to gold-type wealth. The disagreement is genuine and still open.