Ushr calculator

A different obligation with a different shape

Zakat on produce is not the 2.5% most people have in mind. It is a tenth, or a twentieth, of a harvest, and it falls due at the harvest itself rather than after a year of holding. There is no waiting period and no threshold in gold or silver. That is why this tool shares nothing with the wealth calculator.

The rate follows the water

Where the land was watered without cost or effort, rain, a spring, a river, the rate is a tenth. The word ushr means exactly that. Where watering took effort or money, from wells, pumps or purchased water, the rate halves to a twentieth, because the cost of producing the crop is taken into account.

Where a season involved both, half of each is the commonly stated treatment, which comes out at 7.5%. The tool offers all three.

The threshold, and whether there is one

The majority position sets a minimum of five wasq. Below that, nothing is due. A wasq is sixty sa’, so five wasq is three hundred sa’, and since a sa’ measures volume rather than weight, converting it to kilograms depends on what is being measured. The figure commonly published works out at roughly 653 kg, which is what the tool uses and labels as approximate.

Abu Hanifa held that produce has no threshold at all: the rate is due on any quantity. For anyone with a small plot that is the difference between owing something and owing nothing, so the tool asks rather than deciding.

What the tool cannot know

Whether your crop is covered is itself a matter of difference, positions range from storable staples only, through to everything the land yields. The tool applies the rate to whatever quantity you give it and makes no claim about whether that quantity is subject to ushr in the first place.

Nor does it deduct costs. Some contemporary scholars permit deducting the expense of seed, labour and fuel before applying the rate; the classical statements apply it to the harvest as it comes in. Offering a deduction field would imply that question is settled, so there is none.

Produce or its value

The obligation is stated in produce, and the tool gives the answer that way first. Enter a price per kilogram and it will also show what that quantity is worth, which is how most people settle it in practice. The weight is the obligation; the money is the convenience.