Paying Zakat on Gold and Silver by Means of Value

Question

I submit that two mistakes have kept occurring in my zakat until now. First, I counted two to four tolas (a unit of weight, ≈ 11.66 g) of gold by the weight of silver and made no reckoning of the value of gold. Over all the years for which zakat has been given until now, the rate of gold has varied. So in what way should the past zakat now be paid? Second, for silver jewellery I determined the weight of the silver, assessed its value and gave the value — whereas giving the value of silver is not permissible.

Answer

The method of paying zakat on gold by combining it with silver is this: the gold is valued and, by that value, is reckoned as [a corresponding quantity of] silver. For example, someone has one tola of gold and the rest is silver, and the value of that one tola of gold in the market is sixty tolas of silver.

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

Preview. The full text opens with JavaScript enabled.