Spanish law preserved Islamic waqf endowments for local poor relief

Evidence

4. The income from charitable foundations should all be devoted to relief for the poor, ransoming of captives, and highway repairs. This clause is clearly dealing with what had been the important Islamic institution of pious endowments (Arabic waqf, plural awqaf, or in the Arabic of al- Andalus, ahbas or habices as they were generally called in the Castilian documentation). It is intended to make sure that such local charities were to continue to be available for local use and not be misappropriated for private benefit. — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 257 (#expands, via linked claim)

Nearly half the land, as expected, was waqf, known to the Algerians as hubus (Fr. habous). Mostly by force, the French settlers gained control of a good deal of property in the waqf domain, causing the beneficiaries of the endowments to sue for the restoration of the sequestered property. In response, the French declared all property in the hands of the colons, whether acquired lawfully or not, to be lawfully owned by its colonial usurpers. And as if this was not enough arbitrary sovereign power, new laws of property came to displace those of Shariʿa, facilitating further the settlers’ commercial ambitions. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 235 (#complicates, via linked claim)

By the last quarter of the century, the French managed to break up the Algerian legal class and its system of law and legal education, in near-exact parallel with the Ottoman scene. Deprived of their resources due to the expropriation and centralization of waqfs and to various French administrative and educational reforms that changed the structure of the Shariʿa, the ulama were subjected to a qualitative diminishment in the very pedagogy and hermeneutical practice that defined their functions. As happened in other colonial contexts, the socioepistemic mechanisms that reproduced the legal profession largely ceased to exist, and in its place a European system of legal reproduction was installed, with new courts, new types of jurists, lawyers, and European codes of every type and shape. — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 245 (#complicates, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Spanish authorities preserved Muslim waqf endowments for local poor relief and captive ransoming — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 257; Waqf endowments usually had nonreligious as well as religious purposes — Talal Asad, Formations of the Secular:…, 986; Colonial property law retroactively legalized forced seizures of waqf land — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism: A Critique of…, 235 (+1 more)

Broader Connections

• Spanish authorities preserved Muslim waqf endowments for local poor relief and captive ransoming #expands (0.97) — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 257
• Colonial property law retroactively legalized forced seizures of waqf land #complicates (0.75) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 235
• Colonial powers dismantled Islamic legal reproduction by expropriating waqfs and replacing legal pedagogy #complicates (0.72) — Wael Hallaq, Restating Orientalism, 245