A Pre-Modern Genealogy of Siyāsa in Awqāf: Executive Prerogative or Limit?

Abstract This article provides a genealogy of attempts by Mamluk and Ottoman rulers and governors to regulate, seize and liquidate awqāf from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century in Egypt. While studies on siyāsa sharʿiyya have shown how rulers could intervene in waqf regulation under claims of istibdāl , this article explores the relationship between siyāsa and awqāf . It elucidates a certain limit to rulers’ attempts to regulate awqāf by looking at how nineteenth-century jurists cited fourteenth-century jurisprudential precedents in a bid to resist encroachments by the ruler in their domain. Before the nineteenth century, rulers encountered obstacles when interfering in endowments, evincing a limit to the siyāsa prerogative of the ruler to legislate new jurisprudential norms. But after the nineteenth century, istibdāl became a norm much to the chagrin of jurists and judges, making the ruler’s ability to seize awqāf , and intervene in its norms, unencumbered.