The Many Lives of Waqf in Beirut

with Nada Moumtaz

hosted by Susanna Ferguson

| The waqf, often translated as "endowment," is a critical player in the story of urban landscapes, charitable giving, property management, and religion in the Islamic world. But what is a waqf? In this episode, Nada Moumtaz uncovers the many lives of waqf in the city of Beirut, from Ottoman times until the present. We talk about waqfs as buildings, processes, acts, and investments. We see how the story of waqf illuminates central features of the modern state while blurring boundaries between family life and public life, religion and business, charity and investment, past and future, and human and divine.

Click for RSS Feed

The waqf, often translated as "endowment," is a critical player in the story of urban landscapes, charitable giving, property management, and religion in the Islamic world. But what is a waqf? In this episode, Nada Moumtaz uncovers the many lives of waqf in the city of Beirut, from Ottoman times until the present. We talk about waqfs as buildings, processes, acts, and investments. We see how the story of waqf illuminates central features of the modern state while blurring boundaries between family life and public life, religion and business, charity and investment, past and future, and human and divine.

Contributor Bios

	Nada Moumtaz is Assistant Professor in the Department for the Study of Religion and in Near and Middle Eastern Civilizations at the University of Toronto. Her book, God's Property: Islam, Charity, and the Modern State will be published by University of California Press in August 2021.
	Susanna Ferguson is Assistant Professor of Middle East Studies at Smith College. She writes and teaches on the history of gender, sexuality, and political thought in the modern Arab world.

Credits

Episode No. 509
Release Date: 6 August 2021
Recording Location: Northampton, MA / Beirut, Lebanon
Sound production and composition by Susanna Ferguson
Music: "Fifteen Street," Blue Dot Sessions

Bibliography and images courtesy of Nada Moumtaz

Further Listening

	Rayya Haddad	508 7/29/21	Layers of History in Downtown Beirut
	Zoe Griffith	130 11/18/13	Mulberry Fields Forever
	András Riedlmayer	305 3/9/17	Documenting the Destruction of Balkan Waqf Institutions
	Sumayya Kassamali	373 8/19/18	Migrant Labor in Contemporary Beirut
	Omar Cheta	265 9/1/16	Capitalism and the Courts in 19th Century Egypt
	Fahad Ahmad Bishara	383 10/5/18	Islamic Law and Commerce in the Indian Ocean
	Saadia Yacoob, Intisar Rabb, Joshua White, Fahad Bishara, Joel Blecher	480 12/4/20	What is Islamic Law? The Making of the Islamic World

Images

Patchi building, Beirut, Lebanon (credit: Nada Moumtaz)



“Tax the Waqfs” graffiti on Al-Amin mosque (credit: Jana Traboulsi).

Select Bibliography

Asad, Talal. 1992. “Conscripts of Western Civilization.” In Dialectical Anthropology: Essays in Honor of Stanley Diamond, edited by Christine W. Gailey, 333–51. Tallahassee: University of Florida Press.

Atia, Mona. 2013. Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Barnes, John Robert. 1986. An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire. Leiden: Brill.

Birla, Ritu. 2009. Stages of Capital: Law, Culture, and Market Governance in Late Colonial India. Durham: Duke University Press.

Doumani, Beshara. 2017. Family Life in the Ottoman Mediterranean: A Social History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Fleischacker, Samuel. 2004. A Short History of Distributive Justice. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.

Leeuwen, Richard van. 1994. Notables and Clergy in Mount Lebanon : The Khāzin Sheikhs and the Maronite Church, 1736-1840. Leiden; New York: Brill.

Mittermaier, Amira. 2019. Giving to God: Islamic Charity in Revolutionary Times. Oakland: University of California Press.

Mohasseb Saliba, Sabine. 2008. Les Monastères Maronites Doubles du Liban: Entre Rome et l’Empire Ottoman, XVIIe-XIXe Siècles. Paris: Geuthner.

Schmid, Heiko. 2002. “The Reconstruction of Downtown Beirut in the Context of Political Geography.” The Arab World Geographer 5 (4): 232–48.

Zencirci, Gizem. 2015. “From Property to Civil Society: The Historical Transformation of Vakifs in Modern Turkey (1923-2013).” International Journal of Middle East Studies 47 (03): 533–54