Ottoman Waqfs and Charitable Institutions

A waqf (vakıf) was an endowment that set property or income aside for a stated continuing purpose. Its waqfiyya (vakfiye), or foundation deed, named assets, services, administrators, workers and often the people entitled to benefit. From about 1300 until 1922, Ottoman rule extended across Anatolia, most of present-day Turkey, and southeastern Europe and, later, many Arab provinces. Endowments supported mosques, schools, hospitals, fountains, lodgings and kitchens.

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Founders, property and purpose

A founder could endow land, villages, shops or other revenue-producing property and direct its proceeds to a service. Hürrem Sultan, wife of Ottoman sultan Süleyman I, established an imperial foundation in Jerusalem, in Palestine, in 1552. It assigned income from at least 25 villages in Palestine and other profitable properties in what is now northern Lebanon to a complex that included a kitchen and lodgings. This separated the location of income-producing property from the service buildings it funded.

The deed turned patronage into instructions for regular work. A founder could specify whom the institution served, how much workers received and which repairs or supplies were paid from income. Some deeds also provided salaries or other benefits to members of the founder’s family. Historian Hatice Büşra Kürk notes that some early Ottoman endowment deeds assigned paid roles to founders’ family members. A separate 1436 deed for İsa Bey Çelebi’s foundation in Bursa required his daughters, brothers and sisters to pay for their portions if they ate at its kitchen. Some endowments consisted of cash capital that waqfs lent to people who needed money, within limits set by Ottoman scholars in the context of Islamic restrictions on interest.

Trustees and daily administration

A mütevelli, or trustee, administered the foundation under its deed. Duties included collecting rents, arranging building repairs, appointing workers, paying wages, buying supplies, keeping accounts and reporting expenditures. A nâzır, or supervisor, could inspect the trustee’s management. In practice, these jobs connected the land or shops that produced income to the people who maintained buildings and delivered services.

In Ottoman records, imaret could name a charitable complex or, more specifically, its public kitchen. In a large complex, the deed and income supported distinct tasks: teachers and students at a madrasa, or school of religious learning; lodging and food for travellers or students; and the staff who kept a mosque, fountain or hospital operating. A tekke was a lodge for Sufis, members of an Islamic devotional tradition; dervishes lived and studied there.

How an imaret kitchen worked

The Hamidiye imaret in Istanbul, in modern Turkey, shows the work behind a daily meal. The 1781 deed of Abdülhamid I, then Ottoman ruler, assigned income to the kitchen and set out its workforce and provisions. A director and steward oversaw operations; a cellar clerk and storekeeper handled stocks; flour and wood carriers moved supplies; cooks, apprentices and bakers prepared meals and bread; cleaners, dishwashers, repair workers and porters kept the service going. The deed listed 41 workers and daily wages totaling 394 akçe, an Ottoman currency unit.

The kitchen drew on a planned supply chain. The deed allocated grain and fuel for soup, pilav (a rice dish), zerde (a sweetened rice dish) and fodula, a type of bread. It reserved 6,300 kile, a grain measure, for bread flour over 350 days, or 18 kile for a baking day. Wheat for the fodula came from Galos in Rumelia, the Ottoman provinces in southeastern Europe. The steward’s purchasing and storage staff linked this supply to the ovens; bakers then produced the bread, while kitchen staff and servers distributed meals.

Who received food and bread

The Hamidiye deed assigned meals twice daily to people described as strong and weak, poor and needy, students and dervishes. It also allocated bread to the foundation’s workers and to staff or residents of named schools, mosques and Sufi lodges, as well as to poor people. Fodula could accompany salaries, so a worker might receive a specified bread allocation alongside money wages.

An 1823-1903 register records how this distribution developed. Its daily total was 1,596 pairs of fodula: 1,081 pairs allocated to foundation employees, 50 to people listed as poor and 465 to designated prayer reciters. The register also tracks allocations to madrasas, mosques and tekkes, or Sufi lodges. The list ties kitchen production to the daily needs of institutions across the city.

Endowment income, public service and oversight

In late eighteenth-century Jerusalem, historian Oded Peri found that Hürrem Sultan’s imaret served prominent families as well as the weak and needy. As the list of recipients grew while revenues came under pressure, an Ottoman order in 1777 cancelled existing allowances and assigned their reallocation to the treasury. Jerusalem notables appealed after losing support; in 1788 they petitioned Istanbul to restore benefits, citing old, helpless people, women and children among recipients.

In 1826 Sultan Mahmud II established the Evkaf-ı Hümayun Nezareti, the Ministry of Imperial Pious Endowments, to bring many separately supervised royal and dynastic foundations under central administration. The ministry absorbed additional groups of foundations in stages in 1828, 1830 and 1831. Within its first five years, 632 endowments had been added to its administration.