ABSTRACT
According to a well-known hadith, Muhammad reportedly declared that Islam is based on fi ve things: bearing witness (shahadah) that there is no God but God and that Muhammad is the Messenger of God; praying the fi ve daily prayers; paying the obligatory alms (zakat), a type of charity; making pilgrimage to Mecca; and fasting from dawn to sunset during the month of Ramadan. These fi ve pillars have become standard for Sunni Muslims, but can appear in different order (though the shahadah always comes fi rst). A variant of this list found in a text by Abu al-Hasan al-‘Amiri (d. 381/992) leaves off the shahadah-presumably taking it as a given, as Shi‘i scholars do in their slightly different list of esentials of faith-and includes jihad along with prayer, fasting, zakat, and pilgrimage in his list of pillars.
