Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts

Abstract

This volume, written by scholars in Middle Eastern history, addresses thehistory of charity in the Middle East, including its meanings, conceptions, practical patterns, motivations, and the ways of institutionalization andidentifying its “deserving” beneficiaries throughout the last 14 centuries. Itis addressed to academic readers interested in Middle Eastern history or incharity in a universal sense.One aspect of charity dealt with throughout the book is that of motivation.It turns out that besides adhering to general Islamic principles, motivationsof enhancing one’s prestige and social clout have played an importantrole as well. Michael Bonner points out in his chapter, “Poverty and Charityin the Rise of Islam,” that generosity in pre-Islamic and early IslamicArabia was clearly linked to competition for political and social prestigeamong tribal leaders. However, he does not adequately clarify these practices’role in the emergence of the Islamic charitable tradition. In “Charityand Hospitality,” Miri Shefer describes how prominent individuals in theOttoman Empire enhanced their own prestige by founding hospitalsthrough the establishment of awqaf. Likewise, Ottoman sultan AbdülhamidII sponsored numerous charitable projects in order to enhance his own publicimage as a caring and fatherly benefactor toward his subjects, as NadirÖzbek describes in “Imperial Gifts and Sultanic Legitimation during theLate Ottoman Empire, 1876-1909.”Beth Baron and Kathryn Libal, authors of “Islam, Philanthropy, andPolitical Culture in interwar Egypt,” and of “The Child Question,” respectively,shed light on the emergence in Egypt and Turkey, during the first halfof the twentieth century, of motivations informed by various philanthropists’(either Islamist or secular) ideological commitment to the well-being of thenation as a whole. They also describe how this commitment translated itselfinto civil society activism and public debates in both countries.Another relevant aspect is institutionalization. Possibly, the earliest formof institutionalized charity in Islamic history is the collection and distributionof zakat. Timur Kuran distinguishes, in his “Islamic Redistributionthrough Zakat” (see the section “Instrument of Modern Redistribution?”) the“proceduralist” from the “situationist” approach toward this basic Islamicduty. The former approach denotes a strict application of specific rules fromthe Islamic sources, regardless of the concrete situation at hand, while thesecond refers to a flexible implementation of general religious principlesbased on the current situation ...