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Islam |
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Jizya (Arabic: جِزْيَة, romanized: jizya), or jizyah,[1] is a tax historically levied on dhimmis, that is, protected non-Muslim subjects of a state governed by Islamic law.[2] The Quran and hadiths mention jizya without specifying its rate or amount,[3] and the application of jizya varied in the course of Islamic history. However, scholars largely agree that early Muslim rulers adapted some of the existing systems of taxation and modified them according to Islamic religious law.[4][5][6][7][8]
Historically, the jizya tax has been understood in Islam as a fee for protection provided by the Muslim ruler to non-Muslims, for the exemption from military service for non-Muslims, for the permission to practice a non-Muslim faith with some communal autonomy in a Muslim state, and as material proof of the non-Muslims' allegiance to the Muslim state and its laws.[9][10][11] Muslim jurists required adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community to pay the jizya,[12] while exempting women, children, elders, handicapped, the ill, the insane, monks, hermits, slaves,[13][14][15][16][17] and musta'mins—non-Muslim foreigners who only temporarily reside in Muslim lands.[13][4] In regimes that allowed dhimmis to serve in Muslim armies those who chose to join military service were also exempted from payment,[2][14][18][19][20][21] some Muslim scholars claim that some Islamic rulers exempted those who could not afford to pay from the Jizya.[14][22][23]
Together with kharāj, a term that was sometimes used interchangeably with jizya,[24][25][26] taxes levied on non-Muslim subjects were among the main sources of revenues collected by some Islamic polities, such as the Ottoman Empire and Indian Muslim Sultanates.[27] Jizya rate was usually a fixed annual amount depending on the financial capability of the payer.[28] Sources comparing taxes levied on Muslims and jizya differ as to their relative burden depending on time, place, specific taxes under consideration, and other factors.[2][29][30]
The term appears in the Quran referring to a tax or tribute from People of the Book, specifically Jews and Christians. Followers of other religions like Zoroastrians and Hindus too were later integrated into the category of dhimmis and required to pay jizya. In the Indian Subcontinent the practice stopped by the 18th century with Muslim rulers losing their kingdoms to the British East India Company. It almost vanished during the 20th century with the disappearance of Islamic states and the spread of religious tolerance.[31] The tax is no longer imposed by nation states in the Islamic world,[32][33] although there are reported cases of organizations such as the Pakistani Taliban and ISIS attempting to revive the practice.[31][34][35]
Britannica-Afsaruddin
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).Free adult males who were not afflicted by any physical or mental illness were required to pay the jizya. Women, children, handicapped, the mentally ill, the elderly, and slaves were exempt, as were all travelers and foreigners who did not settle in Muslim lands. [...] As Islam spread, previous structures of taxation were replaced by the Islamic system, but Muslim leaders often adopted practices of the previous regimes in the application and collection of taxes.
Sources indicate that the taxation system of early Islam was not necessarily an innovation of Muslims; it appears that 'Umar adopted the same tax system as was common at the time of the conquest of that territory. The land tax or kharaj was an adapted version of the tax system used in Sassanid Persia. In Syria, 'Umar followed the Byzantine system of collecting two taxes based on the account of lands and heads.
There is evidence to show that the Arab conquerors left unchanged the fiscal system that they found prevailing in the lands they conquered from the Byzantines, and that the explanation of jizyah as a capitation-tax is an invention of later jurists, ignorant of the true condition of affairs in the early days of Islam. (Caetani, vol. iv. p. 610 (§ 231); vol. v. p. 449.) H.Lammens: Ziād ibn Abīhi. (Rivista degli Studi Orientali, vol. iv. p. 215.)(online)
anveremon
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).This tax was not imposed on the Christians, as some would have us think, as a penalty for their refusal to accept the Muslim faith, but was paid by them in common with the other dhimmīs or non-Muslim subjects of the state whose religion precluded them from serving in the army, in return for the protection secured for them by the arms of the Musalmans.
...jurists divided the dhimma community into two major groups. The first group consists of all adult, free, sane males among the dhimma community, while the second includes all other dhimmas (i.e., women, slaves, minors, and the insane). Jurists generally agree that members of the second group are to be granted a "blanket" exemption from jizya payment.
The Hanbali position is that boys, women, the mentally insane, the zamin, and the blind are exempt from paying jizya. This view is supposedly shared by the Hanafis, Shafi'is, and Malikis.
Imara
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).ArnoldPoI
was invoked but never defined (see the help page)."There is little doubt that in origin kharaj and jizya were interchangeable terms. In the Arabic papyri of the first century AH only jizya is mentioned, with the general meaning of tribute, while later the poll tax could be called kharaj ala ru'us ahl al-dhimma, i.e. a tax on the heads of protected peoples. The narrower meaning of the word is brought out by Abu Hanifa, "No individual can be liable at the same time to the zakat and to kharaj." [emphasis added]
the jizya was one of the main sources of revenue accruing to the Ottoman state treasury as a whole.
In a statement posted to Jihadi websites and signed by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the self-designated emir of the future Islamic caliphate of Raqqa, as well as the founder of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS] rebel brigade, Christians are urged to pay a tax in order to continue living under ISIS's protection.