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Waqf

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A waqf (plural , awqāf; vakıf) is an inalienable religious endowment in Islam, typically devoting a building or plot of land for Muslim religious or charitable purposes. It is conceptually similar to the common law trust.

Overview

Awqaf were among the most important owners of property (movable as well as immovable) in the Islamic world until recent times, and remain significant. Their incomes support the upkeep of many mosques; in past times, charitable services such as hospitals and orphanages were often maintained by awqaf.

The practice of declaring property as waqf gained considerable currency due to the practice in many Muslim states of expropriating the properties of important persons, especially officials, when they died or were disgraced. By declaring his estate as waqf and his descendants as trustees, a rich man could provide an income for his surviving family.

The Muslim administrative body responsible for the Haram al-Sharif in Jerusalem is often referred to as "the waqf".

Most waqfs are created with an endowment of real estate property. But endowments of cash, hence cash waqfs, have also been permitted. Such waqfs were popular particularly in the Ottoman Empire. Ottoman jurists were not in agreement about the legality of these cash waqfs. While the SeyhulIslam Ebussuud Efendi supported them and gave a fatwa to that effect, some others did not. The result was the cash waqf controversy. The main objection pertained to the way the waqf funds were invested. But cash waqfs were supported by the Ottoman sultans, who considered them essential for the Islamization of South Eastern Europe.

The waqf revenue was not taxed; large portions of land in Egypt and the Ottoman empire were devoted to waqf and thus lay outside of the state’s control. The Ulama were the waqf trustees and assigned waqf revenues to their designated purposes. The net result was to introduce the concept of private ownership of land and to concentrate enormous holdings into the hands of a few families.

Funding of schools and hospitals

After the Islamic waqf law and madrassah foundations were firmly established by the 10th century, the number of Bimaristan hospitals multiplied throughout throughout Islamic lands. In the 11th century, every Islamic city had at least several hospitals. The waqf trust institutions funded the hospitals for various expenses, including the wages of doctors, ophthalmologists, surgeons, chemists, pharmacists, domestics and all other staff, the purchase of foods and remedies; hospital equipment such as beds, mattresses, bowls and perfumes; and repairs to buildings. The waqf trusts also funded medical schools, and their revenues covered various expenses such as their maintenance and the payment of teachers and students.

Comparisons with trust law

The waqf in Islamic law, which developed in the medieval Islamic world from the 7th to 9th centuries, bears a notable resemblance to the English trust law. Every waqf was required to have a waqif (founder), mutawillis (trustee), qadi (judge) and beneficiaries. Under both a waqf and a trust, "property is reserved, and its usufruct appropriated, for the benefit of specific individuals, or for a general charitable purpose; the corpus becomes inalienable; estates for life in favor of successive beneficiaries can be created" and "without regard to the law of inheritance or the rights of the heirs; and continuity is secured by the successive appointment of trustees or mutawillis.

The only significant distinction between the Islamic waqf and English trust was "the express or implied reversion of the waqf to charitable purposes when its specific object has ceased to exist", though this difference only applied to the waqf ahli (Islamic family trust) rather than the waqf khairi (devoted to a charitable purpose from its inception). Another difference was the English vesting of "legal estate" over the trust property in the trustee, though the "trustee was still bound to administer that property for the benefit of the beneficiaries." In this sense, the "role of the English trustee therefore does not differ significantly from that of the mutawalli.

The trust law developed in England at the time of the Crusades, during the 12th and 13th centuries. The trust was introduced by Crusaders who may have been influenced by the waqf institutions they came across in the Middle East.

See also

Notes

References

Further reading

  • Murat Cizakca, A History of Philanthropic Foundations: Islamic World From the Seventh Century to the Present, (Istanbul: Bogazici University Press, 2000)
  • Ira M. Lapidus, A History of Islamic Societies, Second Edition (Cambridge University Press, 2002)
  • Cleveland, William L. History of The Modern Middle East, Westview Press 2000

External links



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