Chapter One: How Many Questions Are on the Paper?

People repeat that they are "the five questions". What comes in the hadith of Abu Barzah al-Aslami, reported by al-Tirmidhi, is four named and fixed items, and the two feet do not move until they are asked about: “On the Day of Rising no servant's feet will move from where they stand until he is asked about four things: about his lifetime and how he spent it; about his knowledge and what he did with it; about his wealth, where he earned it and where he spent it; and about his body and how he used it up.” (meaning; Sunan al-Tirmidhi 2417 — Abu Barza al-Aslami, good and sound (hasan sahih) — al-Tirmidhi)

So they are four: a life, and what it was spent on; knowledge, and what was done with it; money, where it came from and where it went — and this one alone has two parts; and a body, and what it was worn out in. We have given each of them a chapter of its own, in which the question is set out in both its forms: the form every man who has sat in a school hall knows, and the form that is its origin.

As for trusts and the rights of others, we give them a fifth chapter here, and we say it plainly: it is drawn from somewhere other than this hadith. It is not one of its four items; its evidence is verses quoted in their place in this part. This distinction is not a nicety of craft. A paper attributed to a text ought to match that text, and whatever is added to it should be traced to its own evidence and not to that text.

Why They Are Four Though Five Things Are Asked For

Someone may say: you counted four in the hadith, then I found five things asked for in what you wrote. The answer is that the item of money alone came in two parts, a way in and a way out, so that what is asked about under it is two things in one item. This is where the confusion comes from that has people counting them as five in a great many places. The more exact way to put it is: four items, one of them in two parts; the number belongs to the items, not to the things asked for. And what we set apart later, trusts and rights, is neither a part nor an item of this hadith. It is a subject with evidence of its own.