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Islamic taxes are taxes sanctioned by Islamic law.^[1]
They are based on both "the legal status of taxable land" and on "the communal or religious status of the taxpayer".^[1]

Islamic taxes include

• 
  zakat - one of the five pillars of Islam. Only imposed on Muslims, it is generally described as a 2.5% tax on savings to be donated to the Muslim poor and needy.^[1][2] It was a tax collected by the Islamic state.


• 
  jizya - a per capita yearly tax historically levied by Islamic states on certain non-Muslim subjects—dhimmis—permanently residing in Muslim lands under Islamic law, the tax excluded the poor, women, children and the elderly.^[1][3][4][5] (see below)


• 
  kharaj - a land tax at first imposed only on non-Muslims but which was later imposed on Muslims as well.^[1]


• 
  ushr - a 10% tax on the harvests of irrigated land and 10% tax on harvest from rain-watered land and 5% on Land dependent on well water.^[2] The term has also been used for a 10% tax on merchandise imported from states that taxed the Muslims on their products.^[6] Caliph `Umar ibn Al-Khattāb was the first Muslim ruler to levy ushr.^{[citation needed]}

According to scholar Murat Çizakça, only zakat, jizya and kharaj are mentioned in the Buktasira.^[7]

Ushr

Ushur or ushr, in early Islam, is a 5 percent for irrigated lands or 10 percent for non-irrigated lands levy on agriculture produce. Caliph Umar expanded the scope of ushr to include border trade tax.^[8] It literally means a tenth part,^[9] and it remained in practice in Islamic ruled territories from Spain and North Africa through India and Southeast Asia through the 18th century.^[10] Ushur was applied only on non-Muslim traders, at a rate of 10% of the value of the merchandise that was either imported or exported across the border controlled by the Islamic state. It applied to non-Muslim traders who were residents of the Islamic state (dhimmi), as well as to non-Muslim traders who were foreigners and wished to sell their merchandise inside the Islamic state.^[8] Historical medieval era trade documents between Oman and India, refer to this tax on ships arriving at trade port as ashur or ushur.^[11] The tax created an incentive for non-Muslim traders to convert into Muslims thereby escape the Ushr tax disadvantage.

References