Fayʼ

Fayʼ is the term in Islamic law for property that accrues to the Muslim community from the unbelievers without the waging of war—without the urging of horse or camel against it—as distinct from ghanīmah, the spoils taken by force of arms in battle. It includes the lands, wealth, and tribute that come to the Muslims by the submission or the flight of their enemies, by treaty, or by the like, and its disposition is governed by rules set out in the Qurʼān and elaborated in the law. The institution of fayʼ arose in the sīrah of the Madīnan period, in the dealings of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ with the Jewish settlements and the tribes about Madīnah, and it became a foundation of the public finance of the early Islamic state.

The distinction between fayʼ and ghanīmah rests upon the manner of acquisition. Ghanīmah, the spoils of battle, was divided by the rule of Sūrat al-Anfāl: four-fifths to the warriors who had taken it, and one-fifth (al-khums) set apart for God and the Messenger ﷺ, the kindred, the orphans, the needy, and the wayfarer. Fayʼ, taken without fighting, was not subject to this division among the combatants, for no army had striven for it; it fell rather to the Prophet ﷺ to dispose of for the common good of the community, according to the rule laid down in Sūrat al-Ḥashr, revealed concerning the property of the Banū al-Naḍīr.

The occasion of the Qurʼānic ruling on fayʼ was the affair of the Banū al-Naḍīr, the Jewish tribe of Madīnah who were besieged and expelled in the year 4 AH, and whose lands and palms fell to the Prophet ﷺ without a battle, the siege having ended in their surrender and departure. Concerning this property the verses of Sūrat al-Ḥashr were revealed, declaring that what God had given to His Messenger ﷺ from them was not a thing for which the believers had urged horse or camel, and assigning it to God and the Messenger ﷺ, the near of kin, the orphans, the needy, and the wayfarer, that it might not be a thing taken in turns among the rich. The Prophet ﷺ accordingly divided the property of the Banū al-Naḍīr chiefly among the Emigrants, who had until then been a charge upon the Anṣār, and so relieved the burden upon his helpers.

Other acquisitions of the Prophet ﷺ were likewise classed as fayʼ. The oasis of Fadak, which submitted by treaty without fighting at the time of Khaybar, fell to the Prophet ﷺ as fayʼ and became his special portion, applied to the needs of his household and to charitable ends; and a part of Khaybar and of other settlements taken by surrender was reckoned in the same way. From these acquisitions the Prophet ﷺ provided for his family, for he and the people of his house were forbidden the ṣadaqah, the alms; and the surplus he devoted to the equipping of the warriors and the affairs of the community. The administration of these properties became a model for the later law of the conquered lands.

The jurists, drawing upon the practice of the Prophet ﷺ and the verses of Sūrat al-Ḥashr, elaborated the rules of fayʼ in detail, and it became, with the kharāj (the land-tax) and the jizya (the poll-tax of the protected non-Muslims), one of the principal heads of the revenue of the Islamic state, distinct from the zakāt levied upon the Muslims. They differed on certain points—whether the lands taken by conquest were to be divided or left as fayʼ for the whole community, a question debated in the time of ʻUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb concerning the lands of Iraq and Syria—but they agreed upon the principle that fayʼ was a common good, to be expended upon the general interests of the Muslims rather than divided among particular men.

In the sīrah tradition, fayʼ is remembered as the category of property that came to the Prophet ﷺ from his enemies without the shedding of blood: the lands of the Banū al-Naḍīr, the oasis of Fadak, and the like, assigned by the Qurʼān to the common good of the community and to the support of the Emigrants and the household of the Prophet ﷺ. Distinguished from the spoils of battle and governed by its own rule, fayʼ furnished the early community with a lasting institution of its public finance and the law with a foundational example, drawn from the conduct of the Prophet ﷺ, of the disposition of the wealth that accrues to the Muslims in peace rather than in war.

## References

1 Abū ʻAbd Allāh al-Bukhārī, Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, “Kitāb farḍ al-khums,” bāb farḍ al-khums, nos. 3093–3095. 2 Abū al-Ḥusayn Muslim ibn al-Ḥajjāj, Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, “Kitāb al-jihād wa-al-siyar,” bāb ḥukm al-fayʼ, nos. 1756–57. 3 Abū ʻUbayd al-Qāsim ibn Sallām, Kitāb al-amwāl (Beirut: Dār al-Fikr, 1988), 13–57. 4 Abū Yūsuf Yaʻqūb ibn Ibrāhīm, Kitāb al-kharāj (Beirut: Dār al-Maʻrifa, 1979), 23–35. 5 Ibn Hishām, al-Sīra al-nabawiyya, trans. Alfred Guillaume as The Life of Muhammad (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1955), 437–39, 523. 6 Al-Balādhurī, Futūḥ al-buldān, trans. Philip K. Hitti as The Origins of the Islamic State (New York: Columbia University Press, 1916), 1:40–49. 7 F. Løkkegaard, “Fayʼ,” in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed., ed. P. Bearman et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1965), 2:869–70. 8 Ibn Qudāma, al-Mughnī (Cairo: Maktabat al-Qāhira, 1968), 9:287–98.