01The Headline Concept
The Nisab for gold was set by the Prophet ﷺ at 20 mithqal (gold dinars). This has never been disputed across any school of jurisprudence or any era of Islamic scholarship. The number is fixed. What scholars differ on is a purely technical question: how many grams does one mithqal weigh?
This was not a problem in the Prophet's time. People weighed gold physically, using the dinar itself as the unit. No conversion was needed. The challenge arose when modern scholars needed to express that weight in grams — a metric unit that did not exist in classical Islamic scholarship and that the original texts never used.
The core distinction
This is not a disagreement between the four schools of jurisprudence (madhabs). Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali scholars all agree on 20 mithqal. The differing gram figures you see in use today are the product of different scholarly efforts to reverse-engineer what one mithqal weighs in grams, using classical texts, surviving coins, and numismatic evidence.
The result: different scholars and institutions, working from different classical sources and methodologies, have arrived at slightly different gram equivalents. These differences are small — typically between 84g and 100g for the full 20-mithqal Nisab — but they matter when calculating a financial obligation.
02A Brief History of the Mithqal
The mithqal was the standard gold weight of the Islamic world, used continuously across the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates. It was not merely a unit of account — it was embodied in the gold dinar, a coin struck to a carefully controlled physical standard that circulated from Iberia to Central Asia.
In practice, the dinar's weight was remarkably stable over the centuries of the early caliphates. Testing of surviving Umayyad and Abbasid coins consistently places the coin at approximately 4.25 grams. But that stability was never expressed in metric terms, because metrics did not exist. Classical scholars instead defined the mithqal in terms of barley grains: one mithqal equals 72 grains of barley. Precise for its time; the seed of modern disagreement.
When scholars in the 20th century began issuing fatwas in modern currencies and gram weights, they had to go back to classical texts, numismatic evidence, and surviving physical coins to reverse-engineer the gram equivalent. Different chains of scholarly reasoning — using slightly different coin samples, different interpretations of the barley-grain definition, or institutional standards — produced slightly different answers. All of them are legitimate attempts at the same calculation. None is "wrong."
The range produced by this process runs from 84g to 100g per 20-mithqal Nisab. This is not a theological disagreement about Zakat. It is scholarly ijtihad on a technical measurement question, and the disagreement is modern, not ancient.
The history of the dinar's weight, explained
The Arabs did not mint their own coins. They used Byzantine gold (the solidus, roughly 4.4–4.55g) and Sasanian Persian silver coins, trading them by weight rather than by face value. The mithqal already existed as a unit of weight, inherited from earlier Near Eastern systems.
The Prophet ﷺ fixed the Nisab at 20 mithqal of gold and 200 dirhams of silver. At this time coins were weighed physically, so no gram conversion was needed. The relationship was defined by the coins themselves, not by a metric standard.
Faced with many different dirham weights in circulation (the heavier Baghli, the lighter Tabari, and others), Umar studied the most widely used types and fixed the legal relationship: 10 dirhams of silver equal 7 mithqal of gold. This 7:10 ratio became the anchor for all later calculations.
Abd al-Malik issued the first purely Islamic gold dinar, struck to a carefully controlled standard of approximately 4.25g, with Quranic inscriptions replacing Byzantine imagery. His governor Al-Hajjaj minted the matching standardised silver dirham at roughly 2.975g, formally implementing Umar's 7:10 ratio.
For centuries, the dinar held close to its 4.25g standard. Testing of surviving coins shows Umayyad and Abbasid dinars stayed within a few percent of one another — a notable achievement given the equipment of the time. The coin was a stable measure of value across the Islamic world.
Because no metric system existed, classical scholars defined the mithqal in terms of barley grains: 1 mithqal equals 72 grains of barley. This was precise for its time, but a barley grain is a natural object that varies slightly, which is the seed of the modern gram disagreement.
When Muslims needed to calculate Zakat in modern currencies, scholars and institutions converted the classical mithqal into grams. Different methodologies — using surviving coins, the barley-grain definition, or institutional standards like AAOIFI — produced slightly different results, from 84g to 100g for the full 20-mithqal Nisab. None of these is "wrong"; they are different routes to the same historical coin.
So the disagreement you see in the table below is not 1,400 years old. The coin was stable. The disagreement is modern, and it is about translating an ancient weight into a gram figure with no surviving original to weigh.
Sources: Encyclopaedic and numismatic records on the gold dinar and the Umayyad coinage reforms, including studies of surviving Umayyad and Abbasid coins and classical works such as Al-Mawardi's al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya and Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah.
03Documented Calculations
The following are documented scholarly calculations for the Nisab gold weight (per 20 mithqal) and their corresponding silver equivalents.
| Gold (grams) | Silver (grams) | Source / Authority |
|---|---|---|
| 84.00 | 600.00 | Ibn ʿĀshūr |
| 84.66 | 592.40 | Muʿjam al-Fuqahāʾ (miscellaneous) |
| 84.70 | 592.90 | Nūh Keller |
| 85.00 Used by nisab.tahababa.com | 595.00 | AAOIFI (Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions) |
| 87.48 | 612.36 | Deoband / Maulana Mufti Muhammad Shafi |
| 96.00 | 672.00 | Abū Yusr / Ibn ʿĀbidīn |
| 100.00 | 700.00 | Shām tradition / ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ʿUyūn al-Sūd |
04What This Means for You
nisab.tahababa.com uses 85g of gold as its default, following the AAOIFI standard. AAOIFI (the Accounting and Auditing Organisation for Islamic Financial Institutions) is one of the most widely adopted contemporary authorities on Islamic finance, and its 85g figure is the basis used by Islamic financial institutions globally.
If you follow a scholar or institution that uses a different gram weight, your Nisab threshold is proportional. The relationship is direct: a higher gram weight means a higher Nisab, and vice versa. No school of jurisprudence is favoured in this table. All of the figures above represent legitimate scholarly positions.
The silver Nisab follows the same logic. The figure of 200 dirhams is undisputed; what varies is the gram weight of one dirham, derived from the same scholarly ijtihad process applied to the mithqal.
This page does not tell you which gram weight to use. That is a matter for you to settle with your scholar, institution, or community. If you are unsure, follow the scholar or organisation you already trust for Zakat rulings.
05Adjust for Your Scholar's Weight
If you follow a ruling that uses a different gram weight, use this tool to find the equivalent Nisab threshold based on today's live gold price.
Explore further: Understanding Nisab — the scholarly basis for the gold and silver standards across the four schools.