The paper traces the establishment and development of dīwān al-awqāf in Egypt in the 19th century. It analyzes two manuscript documents stored in the Egyptian state archive in Cairo. The first one is a regulation of 1837, entitled Lā’ihat tartīb camalīyat al-awqāf bi-l-thughūr wa al-banādir. The second one is Lā’ihat dīwān al-awqāf, which dates back to 1851. The aim of this paper is to present a full edition of both documents and review their content in the context of dīwān’s institutional development. It is demonstrated that the regulation of 1837 is, contrary to earlier assessments, predicative of the dīwān only to a limited extent. Its significance is reassessed within the broad framework of Muhammad cAlī’s waqf policy, which is dealt with at the beginning of the paper. Then the document of 1851 is introduced. It represents, most probably, the very first preserved constitutive document of dīwān alawqāf in 19th century Egypt. The content of the document makes it possible to define the structure of the dīwān and its executive powers. The paper concludes with a survey of the development of dīwān al-awqāf up to 1895, when it evolved into a sophisticated bureau of administration.
The article traces the history of the waqf of Madrasa az-Zāhirīya as depicted in Najmuddīn al-Ghazzī´s biographic dictionary of Damascene scholars Lutf as-samar wa qutf ath-thamar. Confronting the technical information on the waqf from the foundation deed (waqfīya) with the information contained in biographies reveals a rather different picture of madrasa´s social significance then that usually depicted in terms of European institutional methodologies. In the biographic dictionary there is hardly any space for the madrasa as an educational institution. This only fact requires a reappraisal of its significance not only for Ottoman Damascus environs but for Muslim societies in general.