Hadith collections / Al-Kafi

Al-Kafi · Hadith 4

The Book of al-Zakat · Rules about Business Losses · Volume 3, book 5, chapter 16, Hadith 4

Original Arabic text

4ـ سَمَاعَةُ قَالَ وَسَأَلْتُهُ عَنِ الرَّجُلِ يَكُونُ مَعَهُ الْمَالُ مُضَارَبَةً هَلْ عَلَيْهِ فِي ذَلِكَ الْمَالِ زَكَاةٌ إِذَا كَانَ يَتَّجِرُ بِهِ فَقَالَ يَنْبَغِي لَهُ أَنْ يَقُولَ لأَصْحَابِ الْمَالِ زَكُّوهُ فَإِنْ قَالُوا إِنَّا نُزَكِّيهِ فَلَيْسَ عَلَيْهِ غَيْرُ ذَلِكَ وَإِنْ هُمْ أَمَرُوهُ أَنْ يُزَكِّيَهُ فَلْيَفْعَلْ قُلْتُ أَ رَأَيْتَ لَوْ قَالُوا إِنَّا نُزَكِّيهِ وَالرَّجُلُ يَعْلَمُ أَنَّهُمْ لاَ يُزَكُّونَهُ فَقَالَ إِذَا هُمْ أَقَرُّوا بِأَنَّهُمْ يُزَكُّونَهُ فَلَيْسَ عَلَيْهِ غَيْرُ ذَلِكَ وَإِنْ هُمْ قَالُوا إِنَّا لاَ نُزَكِّيهِ فَلاَ يَنْبَغِي لَهُ أَنْ يَقْبَلَ ذَلِكَ الْمَالَ وَلاَ يَعْمَلَ بِهِ حَتَّى يُزَكُّوهُ. وَفِي رِوَايَةٍ أُخْرَى عَنْهُ إِلاَّ أَنْ تَطِيبَ نَفْسُكَ أَنْ تُزَكِّيَهُ مِنْ رِبْحِكَ قَالَ وَسَأَلْتُهُ عَنِ الرَّجُلِ يَرْبَحُ فِي السَّنَةِ خَمْسَمِائَةِ دِرْهَمٍ وَسِتَّمِائَةٍ وَسَبْعَمِائَةٍ هِيَ نَفَقَتُهُ وَأَصْلُ الْمَالِ مُضَارَبَةٌ قَالَ لَيْسَ عَلَيْهِ فِي الرِّبْحِ زَكَاةٌ.

Published English translation

4. Sama‘ah has said the following: “I once asked abu ‘Abd Allah (a.s.), about a man who has a certain asset for profit-sharing purposes. Is such asset subject to Zakat if used in business? He (the Imam) said, ‘He must ask the shareholders to pay Zakat and if they said that they pay Zakat, he then is not required to do anything more than that. If they ask him to pay Zakat then he must pay.’ I then said, ‘What happens if they said that we pay but he knows that they do not pay?’ He (the Imam) said, ‘If they confirm that they pay, he then is not required to do anything more than that, but if they say that they do not pay Zakat, then it is proper for him not to accept the asset to work with it in business.’” In another Hadith from him (the Imam) it is said that if he out of his own choice and from his own share of profit pays Zakat he can do so. I then asked him (the Imam) about a man who gains five hundred dirham profit in one year. Six and seven hundred is its expenses and the capital for profit sharing. He (the Imam) said, ‘Zakat is not due on profits.’”

Narrator and transmission

See the transmission information preserved in the original source text.

Attributed scholarly assessments

Allamah Baqir al-Majlisi: موثق وآخره مرسل

Mirʾāt al-ʿUqūl fī Sharḥ Akhbār Āl al-Rasūl (16/52)

Assessment transcribed from the source's named scholar and reference. No new grading or consensus is asserted; differing entries remain separate.

Shaykh Baqir al-Behbudi: Catalogue non-inclusion note (not an authenticity grade)

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Kāfī

Source records non-inclusion in this scholar's selection; this is not itself a weak or authentic grade.

Source, rights, and attribution

dataset Name
Thaqalayn public library, via ThaqalaynAPI snapshot
source Url
https://thaqalayn.com/hadith/3/5/16/4
license
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
edition
Al-Kafi, volume 3, Thaqalayn digital edition / Muhammad Sarwar translation
imported At
2026-10-18T21:36:12.871Z
license Url
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
rights Statement Url
https://thaqalayn.com/terms
attribution
Source: Thaqalayn (Stichting Thaqalayn). Compiler: Shaykh Muḥammad b. Yaʿqūb al-Kulaynī. Translation: Muhammad Sarwar. Data transport: MohammedArab1/ThaqalaynAPI. No endorsement implied.
translator
Muhammad Sarwar
source Revision
becbad600b693ce23735d7403c4126ce7c896d34
content Hash
4caf99e98d880b9e98ea4d5e3f196abd611094d146ce3118b3736fd4056fcc2a
source File Hash
c1963d9c5ae304c52e135f93552237f5ab876e0b12123bbc2d513a90dbd36cc2
original Source Url
https://thaqalayn.net/hadith/1/5/16/4
changes
Arabic and English texts preserved verbatim from pinned snapshot. Compiler introduction excluded where present; references mapped to fields; assessment whitespace trimmed; source-supplied English sanad retained separately. Search normalization is not applied to displayed text. Snapshot URL's erroneous volume 1 segment corrected to volume 3 using the reviewed file/book/volume metadata and publisher chapter structure; original URL retained for audit.
verification Note
Publisher content rights, translator attribution and structural checks, with independent publisher-page spot checks—not scholarly authentication or printed-edition collation. Historical text and scholarly reference strings may contain source errors; they are not silently corrected. No full commentary prose or inferred narrator identity is added. Muʿjam coverage, where present, is only the supplied excerpt, not the complete work.