Ottoman military reform in 1826 enabled seizure of all public waqf incomes

Evidence

Once the traditional army units were eliminated, the Istanbul government decreed that the major waqfs of the empire were to be placed under the control of a new Imperial Ministry of Endowments, which meant, within a few years from that act, that the incomes of all these waqfs were seized. The same ministry also seized the Water Works Administration, since public fountains and the public water supply were largely constituted as waqf endowments. Having been effectively owned by the public for centuries, water and its distribution have now become subject to the will of government. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 224

Categorization

• XREF: State expropriation of religious-communal endowments parallels the enclosures/dissolution of the monasteries in early modern England; connects to the reader’s library on how institutions consolidate state power.
• SEED: Angle: ‘When did water become the state’s to give?’ — the 1826 seizure of waqf-funded water as a turning point in public-commons privatization.