Zakat Bahimat al-Anam al-Saima
- Author died
- 1440 AH
- Editions
- Safir Press
Zakat Bahimat al-Anam al-Saima (The Zakat on Pasturing Livestock) is a concise legal treatise on the obligatory alms (zakat) applicable to free-grazing camels, cattle, and sheep and goats, written by the Saudi scholar Saeed bin Wahf al-Qahtani (d. 1440 AH / 2018 CE) .
Background and Composition
The work forms the forty-fourth treatise in al-Qahtani's series of published instructional treatises (rasa'il) . The author completed its writing on the evening of Saturday, 24 Muharram 1426 AH . In compiling the legal determinations and preferred positions (tarjihat) within the text, al-Qahtani drew extensively on the teachings and rulings of his mentor, Abd al-Aziz ibn Abd Allah ibn Baz .
Scope and Contents
The treatise outlines the jurisprudential definition of pasturing livestock (bahimat al-anam al-saima), the evidence for the obligation of zakat from the Quran, the Sunnah, and scholarly consensus (ijma), and the four requisite conditions for its payment:
- Pasturing freely on permissible grasslands for all or most of the year (al-sa'imah) rather than being stall-fed (al-malufa).
- Being acquired for milk, breeding, or fattening rather than being working beasts (awamil) used for plowing or carrying goods .
- The completion of a full lunar year (hawl), noting that the passage of the year for offspring (nitaj) follows that of their dams .
- Attaining the minimum legal threshold (nisab), which begins at five camels, thirty cattle, and forty sheep or goats .
To aid clarity, the author illustrates the prescribed zakat tiers and their corresponding ages and types using structured charts and tables .
The treatise also addresses particular legal cases:
- Camel zakat and compensation (al-jubran): If a payer does not possess the exact age-class due on camels, an animal one year older may be accepted with a return of two sheep or twenty dirhams from the collector (musaddiq), or an animal one year younger accompanied by two sheep or twenty dirhams from the owner . A male ibn labun (two-year-old camel) can replace a missing female bint makhad (one-year-old camel) without compensatory payment .
- Collection regulations: The collector is forbidden from taking defective, decrepit, excessively aged, male goats or rams, pregnant animals, or the very best of an owner's property (khiyar al-mal), taking instead average-quality female animals .
- Valuation and trade: While sub-threshold herds of different species cannot be combined for regular livestock zakat, they must be combined to meet the threshold if held as trade merchandise (urud al-tijarah), in which case zakat is paid according to monetary value . The author maintains that paying monetary value (al-qimah) instead of the designated animals is impermissible for ordinary livestock zakat, except for the specifically legislated compensatory payments .
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