Among the property obligations in Islam, khums is the one most often misunderstood from outside and least often argued from within. Those who pay it frequently cannot say exactly where its evidence lies; those who reject it frequently assume it has none at all. This article tries to put the question where it belongs.

The starting point is a single verse.

۞وَٱعۡلَمُوٓاْ أَنَّمَا غَنِمۡتُم مِّن شَيۡءٖ فَأَنَّ لِلَّهِ خُمُسَهُۥ وَلِلرَّسُولِ وَلِذِي ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ وَٱلۡيَتَٰمَىٰ وَٱلۡمَسَٰكِينِ وَٱبۡنِ ٱلسَّبِيلِ إِن كُنتُمۡ ءَامَنتُم بِٱللَّهِ وَمَآ أَنزَلۡنَا عَلَىٰ عَبۡدِنَا يَوۡمَ ٱلۡفُرۡقَانِ يَوۡمَ ٱلۡتَقَى ٱلۡجَمۡعَانِۗ وَٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ كُلِّ شَيۡءٖ قَدِيرٌ

“And know that whatever you take as spoils, a fifth of it belongs to Allah, to the Messenger, to the near of kin, the orphans, the poor and the wayfarer ...”

This verse came down after the Battle of Badr — the Day of Furqan, the day the two armies met. No one disputes that. What is disputed is two things, and they need to be kept apart if the discussion is not to tangle:

First, is the phrase mâ ghanimtum — whatever you gain — general, covering every acquisition, or specific to the spoils of war?

Second, if it is general, is there anything that later narrowed it?

What ghanimah means

The Arabic lexicographers agree on one thing: the root ghunm is wider than war booty. Ibn Manzur and al-Fayruzabadi give it as obtaining something without hardship. Ibn Faris gives its origin as benefiting from something one did not previously own, and says the word was then specialised for what is taken from an enemy. Ar-Raghib al-Isfahani gives the same order: ghunm means to acquire, and it was subsequently used for what is acquired from an enemy.

That wider usage is present in the Qur’an itself.

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓاْ إِذَا ضَرَبۡتُمۡ فِي سَبِيلِ ٱللَّهِ فَتَبَيَّنُواْ وَلَا تَقُولُواْ لِمَنۡ أَلۡقَىٰٓ إِلَيۡكُمُ ٱلسَّلَٰمَ لَسۡتَ مُؤۡمِنٗا تَبۡتَغُونَ عَرَضَ ٱلۡحَيَوٰةِ ٱلدُّنۡيَا فَعِندَ ٱللَّهِ مَغَانِمُ كَثِيرَةٞۚ كَذَٰلِكَ كُنتُم مِّن قَبۡلُ فَمَنَّ ٱللَّهُ عَلَيۡكُمۡ فَتَبَيَّنُوٓاْۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ كَانَ بِمَا تَعۡمَلُونَ خَبِيرٗا

“... and do not say to one who offers you peace, ‘You are not a believer,’ seeking the goods of the life of this world — for with Allah are abundant gains (maghânim kathîrah) ...”

Here maghânim is set in contrast with the goods of this world, and what is meant is the reward of the hereafter. That is not war booty in any sense. The hadiths use the word just as flexibly: gatherings of remembrance are called a ghanimah, and fasting in summer a cool ghanimah.

So far the argument is strong. But honesty requires one note, and it comes from the material this article was built on: that material concedes that by the later period of revelation, ghanimah had become a technical term of the law for what is acquired on the battlefield.

That concession matters, and it cannot be passed over. For if a word had already become a technical term by the time a verse came down, then its root meaning no longer settles what the verse intends. Which is to say: the linguistic argument alone cannot decide this question. The burden shifts elsewhere — to how the word was actually used by the Messenger of Allah SAAW in practice.

The delegation of Abd al-Qays

And here is the report most deserving of attention — not because it is quoted most often, but because it stands in Sahih al-Bukhari.

The delegation of Banu Abd al-Qays came to the Messenger of Allah SAAW. They said they were unable to reach him except during the sacred month, because between them and Madinah lay the settlements of the disbelievers of Mudar. They therefore asked for one decisive matter they could act on and carry back to their people left behind.

The Messenger of Allah SAAW commanded them four things: faith in Allah alone — which he glossed as the testimony of faith, establishing the prayer, paying the zakat, and fasting Ramadan — and that you hand over the khums from al-maghnam.

Note whom the command was addressed to. A people who were in the middle of explaining that they were hemmed in, could not travel freely, and came only in the month in which fighting is forbidden. Khums is set alongside prayer, zakat and fasting as a standing obligation to be carried home for the whole tribe to practise — not as the division of the proceeds of an expedition.

It should be said that some Sunni scholars read the report differently: Abd al-Qays did raid their neighbours, so al-maghnam here still means spoils. That reading is not impossible. But it requires us to understand “the khums from al-maghnam” as something of a different order from the three obligations named alongside it, when all four were given in a single breath as provisions for the journey home.

The letters to the tribes

There is a second body of evidence pointing the same way: the letters and covenants the Messenger of Allah SAAW wrote to various tribes and to his own agents.

To Amr ibn Hazm, sent to Yemen, he gave instructions to take Allah’s khums from every acquisition, along with the charity due on cultivated land — a tenth where it is watered by rain, half of that where it is watered by bucket. To the kings of Himyar, to Junadah al-Azdi, to Banu Tha’labah, to a section of Juhaynah — the pattern of the wording repeats: establish the prayer, pay the zakat, and render the khums from maghânim.

Again, khums appears next to prayer and zakat as an obligation attaching to a community, not as the division of war proceeds. And the division of war proceeds was in any case not in the hands of the tribes: the spoils were gathered and distributed by the Messenger of Allah SAAW himself after the fifth had been taken out. There was nothing to write letters about.

This body of evidence has to be weighed according to its class. These letters are collected in the works of sira and tabaqat, not in the sahih collections. Their value lies in their repetition, not in the strength of any one of them.

What is in fact already agreed

This part is usually skipped, though it changes the shape of the whole debate.

Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim carry a terse hadith of Abu Hurayra: a stray animal carries no liability, a well carries no liability, a mine carries no liability — and in rikaz there is the khums.

Rikaz is treasure buried in the age of ignorance and later found. So here is an obligation of a fifth on something that is not war booty at all, and that is also not zakat. Abu Yusuf, the student of Abu Hanifah, works it out at length in al-Kharaj: khums on mines and on rikaz, with no threshold applying, and he states explicitly that what is taken is not zakat but has the standing of ghanimah.

Consider what that means. The category “khums on something that is not war booty” already exists inside Sunni jurisprudence, and was already worked out in detail by a jurist of the second century. So the disagreement between the schools is not between “there is khums outside war” and “there is not” — it is about how far that category extends. Does it stop at mines and buried treasure, or does it take in the profits of trade and work?

This is an important shift. The question is no longer whether someone has invented an obligation, but where the line is drawn.

Six shares, and one that went missing

The second question in the verse is not what khums is levied on but to whom it goes. The verse names six: Allah, the Messenger, dhil qurbâ, the orphans, the poor, and the wayfarer.

That dhil qurbâ in the khums verse means the kin of the Messenger of Allah SAAW is scarcely disputed among the commentators — the context names the Messenger immediately before, as it does in the verse of fai’.

مَّآ أَفَآءَ ٱللَّهُ عَلَىٰ رَسُولِهِۦ مِنۡ أَهۡلِ ٱلۡقُرَىٰ فَلِلَّهِ وَلِلرَّسُولِ وَلِذِي ٱلۡقُرۡبَىٰ وَٱلۡيَتَٰمَىٰ وَٱلۡمَسَٰكِينِ وَٱبۡنِ ٱلسَّبِيلِ كَيۡ لَا يَكُونَ دُولَةَۢ بَيۡنَ ٱلۡأَغۡنِيَآءِ مِنكُمۡۚ وَمَآ ءَاتَىٰكُمُ ٱلرَّسُولُ فَخُذُوهُ وَمَا نَهَىٰكُمۡ عَنۡهُ فَٱنتَهُواْۚ وَٱتَّقُواْ ٱللَّهَۖ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ شَدِيدُ ٱلۡعِقَابِ

What then differed was the fate of that share after his passing, and the difference is recorded within Sunni jurisprudence itself. Ibn Qudamah notes in al-Mughni that the circle of Abu Hanifah dropped the share of the Messenger and the share of the kin, dividing the khums into three parts only. Ash-Shafi’i and Ahmad retained the kin’s share for the Banu Hashim. Malik referred the whole of it to the judgement of the imam. Ibn Qudamah himself, having set the positions out, holds that dropping those shares departs from the plain sense of the verse, since Allah appointed a portion for the Messenger and his kin just as He appointed one for the other three groups.

That these shares became contested early is also recorded in Sahih al-Bukhari. In the narration of Aisha, Fatimah a.s. sent to Abu Bakr asking for her inheritance from the Messenger of Allah SAAW — what Allah had bestowed on him at Madinah, the land of Fadak, and what remained of the khums of Khaybar. Abu Bakr declined, on the grounds that the prophets leave no inheritance. The narration continues that Fatimah a.s. thereafter did not speak with him until she died six months after her father, and that Ali a.s. buried her at night.

This is mentioned here not to open the question of Fadak — that is a subject of its own and will not be settled in a paragraph — but for one small and factual point: the khums of Khaybar is named in it. Which means the division of the khums shares was already an open question within months of the Messenger of Allah SAAW’s death, and that this is recorded not in the books of one party but in Sahih al-Bukhari.

What needs correcting

The material this article was built on carries many valuable citations, but its translation holds several errors that should be named.

The rikaz hadith. In that material, the closing clause of Abu Hurayra’s hadith is rendered as “on a mine of gold or silver there is khums.” The original reads wa fi’r-rikâzi al-khumus — “and in rikaz there is the khums.” Rikaz is buried treasure, not a gold or silver mine; the mine is in fact named earlier in the same series, among the things that carry no liability. The error obscures the structure of the hadith.

The narration about Fatimah a.s. The material states that Ali a.s. “did not permit Abu Bakr to attend or to pray over her.” Bukhari’s wording is lam yu’dhin bihâ Abâ Bakr — he did not notify Abu Bakr — and he then prayed over her himself. Not notifying and not permitting are not the same thing, and on a narration this sensitive the difference matters.

The linguistic argument. As noted above, the material concedes that ghanimah had become a technical term by the late period of revelation, and then proceeds as though the concession had no effect. That concession in fact moves where the burden of proof lies, and this article moves it.

Classes of evidence. The material sets hadiths of the two Sahihs, Musnad reports, quotations from lexicons, and letters from the sira in a single undifferentiated sequence. They are not of equal weight, and a reader is entitled to know which rests on what.

The material also contains a section headed “ijtihad against the text,” consisting of judgements on the caliphs. Judgements of that kind are not carried here. The disagreement over the share of dhil qurbâ is a fact recorded in the Sunni books of jurisprudence themselves, and stating it as a fact is enough.

Where this leaves us

What can be concluded honestly runs roughly as follows.

The school of the Ahlul Bayt a.s. holds khums due on the surplus of a year’s income after living costs. Its basis is not only a linguistic reading of QS 8:41 but also narrations from the Imams a.s. that address the matter directly — among them the written reply of Imam al-Jawad a.s. to a questioner, that the khums is taken after the deduction of the year’s ordinary expenses. That qualification matters: it is what distinguishes khums from a levy on gross income.

The majority of the Sunni schools restrict khums to war booty, together with rikaz and mines according to each school’s detail. That reading is not an arbitrary one: it holds to the occasion of the verse’s revelation and to the sense the term carried when the verse came down.

What cannot be maintained is only the assumption that the other side has no evidence. Both read the same verse, both use reports from the same books, and both already accept that there is a khums outside the battlefield. The rest is a question of where the line falls, and questions of that kind are settled by scholarship, not by accusation.

For the reader who pays it, the particulars — the amount, the timing, and to whom it is remitted — are referred back to the manual of one’s own marja’. This article has only tried to show that what is being paid rests on something.