Amidst the politics of the Mamluk-era spice route, why did the standard-bearers of Islamic law routinely oppose the sultanate’s imposition of an alms-tax on merchandise (zakāt al-tijāra), despite the abundance of support for such a tax within the classical tradition of Islamic law? Rather than contending – as some modern scholars have – that prominent jurists developed loopholes that circumvented the original intent of the law to protect the wealthy and the ruling class, I argue that it was precisely the jurists’ careful defense of exemptions and exclusions that allowed them to define the essence of zakāt against forms of taxation they considered unlawful. By narrowing the scope of zakāt, jurists attempted to achieve a moral aim that went beyond the ritual purification of wealth: a limit on the sultanate’s otherwise arbitrary power to tax Muslims as it wished. In doing so, they alleviated some of the tax burden for spice merchants and camel herders alike.

在马穆鲁克时代香料路线的政治之中，为什么伊斯兰教法的标准支持者经常反对苏丹国对商品加征施舍税（zakātal-tijāra），尽管该国内部对这种税有足够的支持。伊斯兰法的古典传统？我认为，杰出的法学家没有像一些现代学者所主张的那样，而是存在漏洞，从而绕过了法律保护富人和统治阶级的初衷，而恰恰是法学家对免除和排斥的谨慎辩护界定扎卡特的本质，以反对他们认为是非法的税收形式。通过缩小zakāt的范围法学家试图达到一种超越财富的仪式纯净的道德目标：限制苏丹国本来可以向穆斯林征税的任意权力。这样，他们减轻了香料商人和骆驼牧民的一些税收负担。