Law Commons^™

The Islamic Family Endowment (Waqf), David S. Powers

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

As part of the larger Islamic inheritance system, endowment law accorded Muslim proprietors a legal means to circumvent the effects of the Islamic inheritance rules by allocating usufruct rights to specified people in specified amounts and to regulate the transmission of those rights from one generation of beneficiaries to the next. Over time, the institution appears to have contributed to the physical integrity of both urban and rural property. Whether or not it also contributed to the economic viability of the local economy is a subject that deserves further investigation." At the same time, the transformation of significant segments of …