Zakat on gold and jewellery: worn, stored, and how to work it out

Why gold and silver carry zakat at all

Zakat falls on wealth that can grow, and gold and silver were the money of the world into which the Qur'ān was revealed. That is why the strongest warning about withheld zakat names them directly:

The Prophet ﷺ explained the verse in the same terms: no owner of gold or silver who does not pay its due except that on the Day of Resurrection it is beaten into plates of fire and he is branded with them (Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 987). And when Umm Salama asked whether the gold ornaments she wore counted as the hoarding the verse condemns, he answered that whatever reaches the zakat threshold and has its zakat paid is not hoarded treasure (Sunan Abī Dāwūd 1564, graded ḥasan by al-Albānī, weak by Zubair ʿAlī Zaʾī). Paid zakat is what turns a store of gold from a liability into lawful, purified wealth.

The nisab of gold, in grams, tola and money

Zakat is owed only once you hold a minimum amount, the nisab. For gold it was set at twenty dinars, with half a dinar due on them:

Half a dinar out of twenty is one fortieth, which is 2.5%. Some scholars of hadith criticise this chain, but the twenty-dinar threshold itself is agreed by the four schools and stated by Mālik in the Muwaṭṭaʾ as the settled practice. The silver nisab, two hundred dirhams, is in Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1447 as five awāq.

A dinar is a weight of gold (a mithqal), and converting it to modern grams gives two common figures:

• 85 g of pure gold, from a mithqal of 4.25 g weighed from surviving early dinars. This is the figure of Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, AAOIFI and the Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia, and of most zakat bodies worldwide.
• 87.48 g, or 7.5 tola, used in many South Asian Hanafi fatwas, including Darul Uloom Deoband. The silver equivalent there is 612.36 g, or 52.5 tola.

Nobody disagrees about the Sunnah amount. The two figures convert an old weight differently, and the gap is under 3%. Use the one your local scholars use.

The nisab in your currency

The table uses world prices on 5 October 2026: gold at about $133.73 a gram and silver at about $1.99 a gram. Local retail prices in India and Pakistan run higher than the world price because of import duties, so use your local jeweller's rate if you are there.

On the 7.5 tola figure the gold nisab is about $11,699, and on 52.5 tola of silver about $1,218. The Barakah Life zakat calculator shows today's figures in your own currency.

Turning karats into pure gold

The nisab and the zakat are measured in pure gold, but jewellery is almost never pure. A karat is one twenty-fourth part, so 22 karat means 22 parts gold and 2 parts other metals. To find the gold in any piece:

Where the schools differ on alloys

The Shafiʿi and Hanbali schools count only the pure gold, for both the nisab and the zakat. The Hanafi school treats an item that is more than half gold as wholly gold, so 22k, 21k, 18k and 14k pieces count at their full weight when testing the nisab. The Maliki school counts debased coins at full weight when they circulate like pure ones, and otherwise the pure content.

The money you pay comes out almost the same either way, because a 22k piece is valued at the 22k price. The difference shows only at the threshold: 90 g of 22k jewellery holds 82.5 g of pure gold, so on its own it reaches the Hanafi nisab of 87.48 g by full weight, but not the 85 g pure-gold nisab of the Shafiʿi and Hanbali schools. For a 10k or 9k item, where gold is the minority metal, the Hanafi rule would treat it as ordinary goods rather than gold; that application to modern karats is a contemporary reading, so a Hanafi follower with a lot of 9k jewellery should ask a scholar.

White gold, plating, platinum and stones

• White gold is gold alloyed with white metals. Count its gold by karat like any other piece.
• Gold-plated and gold-filled items carry only a trace of gold: ignore them unless you hold them for sale.
• Platinum and palladium are not gold or silver. Personal platinum jewellery carries no zakat according to the fatwa bodies we checked; platinum bars held as an investment, or stock held for sale, are counted like trade goods.
• Diamonds, pearls and gemstones are not zakatable unless you trade in them. Subtract their weight (one carat of stone is 0.2 g) or use the net gold weight on the receipt or hallmark.

Jewellery that is worn

This is one of the best-known differences in the whole of zakat, and both sides argue from the Sunnah and the Companions. It helps to see the evidence as each side reads it.

The Hanafi school: zakat is due

The Hanafi school holds that gold and silver are zakatable by their very nature, as the money of the world, whatever their shape or use. The general texts above (9:34 and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 987) make no exception for jewellery, and two narrations speak to worn jewellery directly:

The woman took the bangles off at once and gave them away for Allah and His Messenger. A similar report of two women with gold bracelets is in Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 637, which al-Albānī graded ḥasan. The second narration is from ʿĀʾisha herself:

The same view is reported from ʿUmar, Ibn Masʿūd, ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿAmr and Ibn ʿAbbās. Among recent scholars, Ibn Bāz and Ibn ʿUthaymīn held it too, though neither was Hanafi.

The Maliki, Shafiʿi and Hanbali schools: not due on what is worn

The other three schools (in the Shafiʿi case, its relied-upon position) hold that zakat falls on wealth kept for growth, and jewellery kept for permissible wearing has left that category, like clothes, furniture or a riding animal. Their strongest evidence is what the Companions did. ʿĀʾisha, the narrator of the silver rings, raised her brother's orphaned daughters:

In the next report Mālik relates from Nāfiʿ that ʿAbdullāh ibn ʿUmar adorned his daughters and slave women with gold and did not pay zakat on their jewellery (Muwaṭṭaʾ, Book 17, no. 11). The Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia lists the same view from Jābir, Anas and Asmāʾ bint Abī Bakr. The majority add two points about the Hanafi evidence. First, al-Tirmidhī, after recording the bracelets report, said that nothing on this subject is authentic from the Prophet ﷺ, and the chains of these narrations have been debated ever since. Second, when a Companion narrates a hadith and then acts otherwise, they take it that she understood it in a way that did not reach everyday worn jewellery, and she knew best what she had heard.

The Hanafis have answers too. ʿĀʾisha's nieces were minors, and in the Hanafi school a minor's wealth owes no zakat at all, so her practice does not settle the case of an adult woman. A Prophetic wording “there is no zakat on jewellery” also circulates, but al-Bayhaqī judged it to have no sound basis, and the majority do not rely on it.

So which figure should you use?

If you follow a school, follow it: both positions are held by the imams of this ummah and you are not blameworthy for following either. If you have no school and want one figure that is sound on every view, include your worn jewellery. If zakat was due, you have paid it; if it was not, you have given charity that Allah rewards. Al-Qaraḍāwī, who held that worn jewellery within custom is not zakatable, still wrote that paying on it is better for a woman and gives her more peace about her duty, while no one may force her to. This is also why the Barakah Life calculator shows one figure first, labelled with the school it follows, and puts the other schools' figures one tap away.

How much is “custom”?

The schools that exempt worn jewellery limit the exemption to what women customarily wear. Beyond that, the excess is treated as stored wealth. Some authorities have put a number on custom:

• Singapore (MUIS, 2011): 860 g (200 mithqal). Above it, zakat is due on the total weight, not only on the excess.
• Selangor, Malaysia (amended fatwa, 2023): 800 g. Zakat is due on the weight above 800 g. Other Malaysian states set their own figures, so check your state zakat board.

Where no figure is set, judge honestly by what women in your community actually wear. Necklaces that never leave the drawer are not adornment, whatever they were bought for.

Jewellery that is stored, gifted or kept as savings

Here the schools agree: jewellery that is not kept for wearing is zakatable, like any other gold. Mālik puts it plainly in the Muwaṭṭaʾ: gold or silver jewellery that is not used for wearing is weighed every year and one fortieth is taken. That covers:

• pieces bought as a store of value, or kept “for a rainy day”;
• broken jewellery that would need melting down before it could be worn again (one that only needs a small repair you mean to make keeps its worn status in the Maliki and Shafiʿi schools);
• old pieces you no longer wear and do not intend to;
• jewellery held for sale, which is trade stock and counted at its sale value;
• any gold jewellery owned by a man, since wearing gold is forbidden to men (“silk and gold are forbidden to the males of my ummah and permitted to its females”, Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 1720, ṣaḥīḥ). A man's silver ring is permitted and is treated like worn jewellery by the majority; the Hanafi school counts it with his other silver.

Gold kept for a daughter's wedding

Many mothers put gold aside for a daughter. Zakat follows ownership, not intention. Gold you still hold, even if you call it hers or register it in her name, remains yours, and you pay on it. Once you actually give it to her and hand it over, it is hers: an adult daughter pays if she reaches the nisab. For a minor daughter, the Hanafi school owes nothing on a child's wealth, while the other schools make it zakatable, paid by the guardian (subject to their rule on worn jewellery). Gold set aside unworn for years is stored wealth on every view.

Gold bought as an investment

Bars, coins, sovereigns and gold bought to hold are zakatable in every school, at 2.5% of their market value on your zakat date, once your total reaches the nisab. The forms people hold today:

• Bars and coins: pure weight × the day's price. A 22k sovereign holds 7.32 g of gold.
• Allocated gold in a vault or app, where specific gold is held in your name: it is your gold, counted in full.
• Gold ETFs and gold funds: their units represent gold, so count their full market value on your zakat date.
• Unallocated gold accounts, where you hold only a claim on the provider: Lembaga Zakat Selangor regards these as non-compliant and asks for zakat on the capital paid in, as savings. Whether the product itself is halal is a separate question worth asking before you buy.

The zakat on savings and investments guide covers shares, funds, pensions and crypto in the same way.

How to value your gold

1. Weigh it, or read the weight from the receipt, the hallmark or a jeweller's scale. Subtract stones.
2. Find the pure gold: weight × karat ÷ 24.
3. Multiply by the price of pure gold on your zakat date. Not what you paid, and not the making charges: the Hanafi school measures gold by weight, so workmanship is ignored. Ibn ʿUthaymīn advised using what the piece would fetch as used gold on the day, and a jeweller's buy-back quote is a fair way to find it.
4. Pay 2.5%. Most people pay in money. The Hanafi school, the well-known Maliki position and a narration preferred by Ibn Qudāma accept payment by value; the Shafiʿi school in principle pays gold's zakat in gold, so a Shafiʿi follower may ask a scholar how that applies to modern money.

Gold together with cash

Very few people hold only gold. The schools agree that trade goods are added to gold and silver to complete the nisab, and most scholars give cash the ruling of gold and silver, so cash, gold and trade goods are normally added together and the total tested once. The Hanafi school adds them by value; the Maliki school and one narration from Ahmad add them as fractions of each nisab; the Shafiʿi school does not add gold to silver at all. In Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia and Brunei, where the Shafiʿi school prevails, follow the method of your zakat authority for combining gold with savings.

Which nisab do you test the total against? For gold alone, the gold nisab. For a mix, Hanafi fatwa bodies such as Deoband use the silver nisab, the measure more beneficial to the poor, while others use gold. Today the silver nisab is about a tenth of the gold one, so this choice decides whether many households owe anything. The savings guide sets out both sides in full; Example 2 below shows the effect.

Three worked examples

All prices are from 5 October 2026: pure gold at about $133.73 a gram and silver at about $1.99 a gram, with £1 = $1.32 and $1 = AED 3.67. Each person has held their wealth above the nisab for a lunar year.

Example 1: Hafsa's jewellery box

Hafsa wears her bangles every day, her wedding set at weddings and Eid, and her ring always. She also keeps 50 g of gold coins and 42 g of 21k pieces she inherited from her grandmother and never wears.

Hanafi view: zakat $563.46, on all five pieces. Maliki, Shafiʿi and Hanbali view: zakat $289.86, on the stored pieces only. Their 86.70 g of pure gold is just above the 85 g nisab, so zakat is due on them in every school even with nothing else.

Example 2: Sana, with bangles and some savings

Sana lives in Birmingham. She wears 40 g of 22k bangles and has £2,500 in savings, nothing more.

That day the silver nisab was £894 and the gold nisab £8,590. Her bangles alone (36.67 g of pure gold) are well under the gold nisab, so on their own they would owe nothing in any school. It is the cash beside them, and the silver nisab, that brings her into zakat. This is the most common case, and why a calculator that asks only about gold can mislead.

Example 3: Yusuf, who invests in gold

Yusuf, in Dubai, holds a 100 g bar of 24k gold, 20 g of allocated gold in an app, and a gold ETF worth AED 15,000. All of it is investment gold, so the schools agree on every line.

If Yusuf also wore a 6 g 18k gold ring, its 4.5 g of gold (about AED 2,210) would be zakatable on every view, since gold jewellery is not permitted to men; better still to give it to his wife or sell it.

Do it in the Barakah Life calculator

The Barakah Life zakat calculator was built around jewellery boxes like Hafsa's. Add each piece with its weight in grams, tola, vori, mithqal or troy ounces, pick its karat, subtract stones in grams or carats, and say whether it is worn, stored or held for sale, and who wears it. It shows the pure gold and its value at today's price as you type, or takes a jeweller's buy-back quote instead. The result leads with one figure in your school's view, named on the screen, and “how the schools differ” opens the others, with the source behind each line. There are country versions for India, Pakistan, the UK and the UAE.

Questions people ask

A closing word

Gold is the one wealth the Qur'ān promises to the people of Paradise to wear without measure, and without zakat:

In this world, gold comes with a right owed to others. The Prophet ﷺ told the women of Madinah to give charity “even from your jewellery” (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 1466), and when he urged them after the Eid prayer, they did not reach for a calculator: they took off their earrings and necklaces and gave them there and then (Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 964). Work out your figure carefully, follow the scholarship you trust where it differs, and then give it gladly, knowing that the gold which leaves your box this way is the part of it you keep.

Sources

• Qur'ān 9:34 to 35, 35:33 (quran.com).
• Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 964, 1447, 1466; Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim 987; Sunan Abī Dāwūd 1563, 1564, 1565, 1573; Jāmiʿ al-Tirmidhī 637, 1720; Muwaṭṭaʾ Mālik, Book 17, nos. 10 and 11. Gradings as recorded by al-Albānī and others.
• al-Mawsūʿa al-Fiqhiyya al-Kuwaytiyya (Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia), vol. 18, entry “Ḥulī”, pp. 108 to 116, and vol. 23, entry “Zakat”, pp. 262 to 270 and 298 to 300 (shamela.ws).
• Yūsuf al-Qaraḍāwī, Fiqh al-Zakah, trans. Monzer Kahf, vol. 1 (PDF), and his answer on zakat on jewellery.
• Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura, Zakat on gold jewellery (2011); Jabatan Mufti Negeri Selangor, Fatwa kadar ‘uruf emas perhiasan (amended); Lembaga Zakat Selangor on gold accounts.
• Dar al-Iftaʾ al-Miṣriyya, fatwas 7705 (a woman's jewellery) and 8426 (the gold nisab and alloys).
• Ibn Bāz on worn jewellery; Ibn ʿUthaymīn via IslamQA 19901 and 43033; IslamQA 40210 (precious stones).
• Darul Uloom Deoband, nisab fatwa 1758 (islamqa.org); Darul Iftaa Birmingham on platinum jewellery; Jamia Uloom Islamia Banuri Town on gold kept for children; National Zakat Foundation on gold and silver.

This guide summarises the positions of the schools and of contemporary bodies as recorded in the sources above. It is a study aid, not a fatwa. Where your situation is unusual, or where the views differ and it matters to you, confirm with a scholar whose knowledge you trust.