The Waqf as a Prop for the Social System (Sixteenth — Twentieth Centuries)

Abstract

AbstractIn this essay I argue that an important function of the Muslim waqf in the Near and Middle Eastern social system between the sixteenth and twentieth centuries was to support and reinforce social units or groups based on kinship or quasi-kinship (such as relations between master and freed slave), or on criteria of social class, profession, territory, religion, linguistic-ethnic identity, and ethnic or national identification.