Awqaf in Mamluk Bilad Al-Sham
YEHOSHUA FRENKEL UNIVERSITY OF HAIFA Awqāf in Mamluk Bilād al-Shām The thesis of this article is that the desire for political hegemony was the primary motivation for the awqāf policy adopted by the Mamluk elite. During its first century in Syria and Egypt (1516–97), the Ottoman Empire carried out several cadastral surveys. The data gathered in these surveys were recorded and catalogued. Among the items listed in the Ottoman registers of each of the provinces are religious endowments, their founders, and their property. 1 Looking some centuries backward and comparing the information provided in the Ottoman lists with the data on the Islamic religious endowments (awqāf) in Bilād al-Shām at the end of the Latin Kingdom (1099–1291), we can get a clear picture of the remarkable number of endowments established by Muslims in Damascus, Lebanon, Transjordan, and Palestine during the Mamluk period (1250–1517). Considering the abundant additional information found in inscriptions, 2 legal compendia, biographical works, and chronicles, we can clearly see that the waqf had an unmistakable presence in Mamluk society. 3 It was represented in almost © Middle East Documentation Center. The University of Chicago. 1 Mehmet İpşirli and Muḥammad Dāwūd Tamīmī, eds., Awqāf wa-Amlāk al-Muslimīn fī Filasṭīn fī al-Qarn al-ʿĀshir al-Hijrī ḥasab Daftar 522 (Istanbul, 1402/1982); Muḥammad ʿĪsá Ṣāliḥīyah, Sijill Arāḍī Alawīyah Ṣafad Nābulus Ghazzah wa-Qaḍāʾ al-Ramlah ḥasab al-Daftar Raqm 312 Tārīkhuhu 963/1553 (Amman, 1419/1999); idem, Sijill Arāḍī Liwāʾ al-Quds ḥasab al-Daftar 342 Tārīkhuhu 970/1562 (Amman, 1422/2002); Muḥammad ʿAdnān al-Bakhīt, Daftar Mufaṣṣal Khāṣṣ Liwāʾ al- Shām 958/1551 [tapu daftari 275] (Amman, 1989), 27 (waqf ḥaramayn sharīfayn), 28, 29, 30, (al-ʿushr ʿan māl al-waqf), 36 (al-ʿushr ʿan jumlat mutaḥaṣṣil al-awqāf), 40, 46, 67 (awqāf ḥaramayn wa-quds sharīf wa-khalīl al-raḥmān wa-jāmiʿ banī umayyah sharīf), 69, 76, 82, 89, 126, 128; idem, The Ottoman Province of Damascus in the Sixteenth Century (Beirut, 1982), 147–48; Karl K.
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