The Alms That End the Fast

Zakat al-Fitr is the small obligatory charity given at the close of Ramadan, distinct from the yearly zakat on wealth. Where the greater zakat is calculated on accumulated property, the fitr charity is a fixed per-person amount, due on the head of the household on behalf of every member of the family including infants and dependents, and traditionally reckoned as a set measure of a staple food, dates, barley, wheat or the like, the saa of the classical sources, or its cash equivalent. Its modesty is deliberate: it is a duty that falls on nearly every Muslim, the poor as well as the comfortable, so that the whole community shares in the giving.

The tradition gives the charity two stated purposes: to purify the fast of the lapses and idle talk that may have marred it, and to ensure that the poor are not left without means to share in the joy of the festival that follows. It is on this second purpose that the timing turns.