Ottoman centralization diverted waqf endowments to military ends, collapsing education funding

Evidence

The back payments to the educational sector progressively declined, reaching a near zero point by the middle of the 1850s. Waqf money—formerly, and for centuries, belonging to the autonomous waqfs, which used them for their own operations and the fulfillment of their mission—were now diverted to military and other state-building projects, such as railways, through which the grip of the central government over the periphery was enhanced (this being a replica of what happened in Europe, except that the process in the Ottoman Empire and other Islamic regions was condensed). Waqf property, and the institutions it supported, including those of the Shariʿa, began to fall seriously into ruin. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 227

Categorization

• XREF: Central state extraction weakening autonomous local institutions parallels the co-optation of tribal/communal structures discussed in the Milgrom law-merchant material and in settler-colonial studies.