Niṣāb
Definition
Nisab is the minimum amount of wealth that, once held for a full lunar year, triggers the obligation to pay zakat. Al-Ghazali presents the legal thresholds for different categories of wealth — gold, silver, trade goods, livestock, agricultural produce — and then makes the spiritual point: the nisab is a mercy, not a loophole. It protects the poor from an obligation they cannot sustain while ensuring that those whose wealth has genuinely exceeded their needs participate in the community's welfare. Those close to the nisab who are tempted to calculate their way below it are already showing the disease of love of wealth that zakat is meant to cure.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
1 book in the library
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