[Discussion] "The Uses of Waqf" - Kahire'de seminer, 17-19 Mart 2005

[sule tarakcioglu]

From: Pascale Ghazaleh <ghazaleh@aucegypt.edu
<https://charon.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr/basilix/basilix.php?RequestID=CMPSNEW&premail=-1&is_js=1.4&is_ssl=1&cmps_to=ghazaleh@aucegypt.edu>>

- CALL FOR PAPERS -

The Uses of Waqf: Pious Endowments, Founders, and Beneficiaries

The American University in Cairo
Department of Arabic Studies
Annual History Seminar
17-19 March 2005

Historians have long known the importance of waqfs (pious endowments) to
the political, economic, and social history of the Arab and Muslim world.
As service-providing institutions, waqfs were a major source of education,
health care, and employment. As urban landmarks, they shaped the city
and contributed to the upkeep of religious edifices. By definition,
these endowments were conceived to generate income and therefore played
a crucial role in both rural and urban economies, helping channel surplus
from the countryside to the cities. Rulers and subjects, Christians,
Muslims, and Jews alike, could establish them; their revenue, while
ultimately intended for the community as a whole, could be directed
toward private beneficiaries as well. Waqfs constituted a major resource,
and as such were a favorite target in reform efforts undertaken by
various rulers: in that regard, their status, and such related issues
as ownership and entitlement, were repeatedly at stake in struggles to
impose competing definitions of legitimacy and community. The evolution of
jurisprudence, as well as the real transactions affecting waqfs, has shown
that these institutions, contrary to previous assumptions, neither led
to economic stagnation nor immobilized real estate. Closer examination of
the interplay between law and custom, however -- and, more specifically,
of the varying legal, institutional, and practical aspects of waqfs in
different regions and communities (for example, cash waqfs in Anatolia
and the Arab provinces) -- is necessary to a deeper understanding of
their dynamism and resilience.

Approached from a macrohistorical perspective, and supplemented by
chronicles, biographical dictionaries, and topography, endowment deeds --
waqfiyyas -- allow historians to develop an understanding of how waqfs
structured the landscape. These sources make it possible to estimate the
scope of services provided, and to draw conclusions regarding prices and
salaries, the social identity and status of founders and beneficiaries,
and the types of real estate or movable goods selected as targets for
investment. Such information, however, remains fragmentary, and the
quantitative study of waqfs is by no means exhausted. Individual endowment
deeds may also be examined from a microhistorical perspective with the aim
of recovering the social networks waqfs created, perpetuated, or bypassed,
the family loyalties and rivalries they helped consolidate, and the ways
in which founders' intentions and beneficiaries' strategies could clash or
agree. The study of individual deeds, however, is often confined to the
simple restating and summary analysis of their content, and must be taken
further if it is to allow historians to reach significant conclusions.

The organizers of the AUC Department of Arabic Studies' Annual History
Seminar welcome papers in English, French or Arabic dealing with waqf
as related to the following themes: rural-urban relations; the real estate
market; charity and public services; jurisprudence, qanun, and 'urf; and
social networks. Comparative, cross-cultural approaches, creative analyses
of endowment deeds, and contributions from young scholars are particularly
welcome.

Abstracts of approximately 500 words may be sent to Ms. Marwa Sabri
<msabri@aucegypt.edu
<https://charon.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr/basilix/basilix.php?RequestID=CMPSNEW&premail=-1&is_js=1.4&is_ssl=1&cmps_to=msabri@aucegypt.edu>> 

or Dr. Pascale Ghazaleh <ghazaleh@aucegypt.edu
<https://charon.bcc.bilkent.edu.tr/basilix/basilix.php?RequestID=CMPSNEW&premail=-1&is_js=1.4&is_ssl=1&cmps_to=ghazaleh@aucegypt.edu>>,
The American University in Cairo, Department of Arabic Studies,
P.O. Box 2511, 113 Sharia Kasr El Aini, Cairo, Egypt.

The dead-line for submission of abstracts is 31 December 2004.