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SPECIAL ISSUE INTRODUCTION

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2014

Amy Singer
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Extract

Almost two decades ago, Michael Bonner, Mine Ener, and I organized the first in a series of MESA panels on the general theme of poverty and charity in Middle Eastern contexts. We came to the topic using different chronologies, sources, and approaches but identified a common field of interest in shared questions about how attitudes toward benevolence and poverty affected state and society formation: in early Islamic thought, in the Ottoman Empire of the 15th and 16th centuries, and in khedival Egypt. At that time, we could confidently state that there was very little work in the broad field of Middle East and Islamic studies that focused explicitly on the study of charity and poverty.

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Articles
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International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 46 , Issue 2: Politics of Benevolence , May 2014 , pp. 227 - 238
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

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References

NOTES

1 “Poverty and Social Welfare in Islamic Contexts,” panel at Middle East Studies Association Annual Meeting 1996, Providence.

2 For detailed reviews of the literature up to that point, see Ener, Mine, Managing Egypt's Poor and the Politics of Benevolence, 1800–1952 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 1–25Google Scholar; Singer, Amy, Charity in Islamic Societies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), esp. 17–26Google Scholar; and the articles in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition, most of which were completed by the mid-1990s and the last in 2005.

3 The lengthy and mutiple-authored article “waḳf” in the Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition gives an excellent introduction to this scholarship. Earlier works that are more engaged with endowments as functioning institutions in specific historical contexts include, for example, Faroqhi, Suraiya, “The Tekke of Haci Bektaş: Social Position and Economic Activities,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 7 (1976): 183–208CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Vakıf Administration in Sixteenth Century Konya: The Zaviye of Sadreddin-i Konevî,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 17 (1974): 145–72; Raymond, A. and Tawab, A. Abdul, “Les Grand Waqfs et l'Organisation de l'Espace Urbain à Alep et Au Caire à l’Époque Ottomane (XVIe-XVIIe Siècles),” Bulletin d'Etudes Orientales 31 (1979–80): 113–28Google Scholar; and Gerber, H., “The Waqf Institution in Early Ottoman Edirne,” Asian and African Studies 17 (1983): 29–45Google Scholar.

4 “Introduction,” in Bonner, Michael, Ener, Mine, and Singer, Amy, eds., Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 2003), 2Google Scholar.

5 Attending the workshop as discussants were a number of Europeanists and Americanists who had published significant works on charity and beneficence. For their contribution, see Bonner et al., Poverty and Charity, 7–8.

6 Ener, Managing Egypt's Poor.

7 Examples from the past decade include Onyedum, Jennifer Johnson, “‘Humanize the Conflict’: Algerian Health Care Organizations and Propaganda Campaigns, 1954–62,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012): 713–31CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fontaine, Darcie, “Treason or Charity? Christian Missions On Trial and the Decolonization of Algeria,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 44 (2012): 733–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Maksudyan, Nazan, “Orphans, Cities, and the State: Vocational Orphanages (Islahhanes) and Reform in the Late Ottoman Urban Space,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 43 (2011): 493–511CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pierret, Thomas and Selvik, Kjetil, “Limits of ‘Authoritarian Upgrading’ in Syria: Private Welfare, Islamic Charities, and the Rise of the Zayd Movement,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 41 (2009): 595–614CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Challand, Benoît, “A Nahḍa of Charitable Organizations? Health Service Provision and the Politics of Aid in Palestine,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 40 (2008): 227–47CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Buğra, Ayşe, “Poverty and Citizenship: An Overview of the Social-Policy Environment in Republican Turkey,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 39 (2007): 33–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Baylouny, Anne Marie, “Creating Kin: New Family Associations as Welfare Providers in Liberalizing Jordan,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 38 (2006); 349–68Google Scholar; and Özbek, Nadir, “Philanthropic Activity, Ottoman Patriotism, and the Hamidian Regime, 1876–1909,” International Journal of Middle East Studies 37 (2005): 59–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 Among the representative works published during the past decade are Clark, Janine A., Islam, Charity, and Activism: Middle-Class Networks and Social Welfare in Egypt, Jordan, and Yemen (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Pascual, Jean-Paul, ed., Pauvreté et Richesse dans le Monde Musulman Méditerranéen/Poverty and Wealth in the Muslim Mediterranean World (Paris: Maisonneuve & Larose, 2003)Google Scholar; Timur Kuran, “Islamic Redistribution through Zakat: Medieval Roots of Contemporary Problems,” in Bonner et al., Poverty and Charity, 275–94; Benthall, Jonathan and Bellion-Jourdan, Jérôme, The Charitable Crescent: Politics of Aid in the Muslim World (London: I. B. Tauris, 2003)Google Scholar; Alterman, J. and van Hippel, K., eds., Islamic Charities (Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2007)Google Scholar; Frenkel, Miriam and Lev, Yaacov, eds., Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Fauzia, Amelia, Faith and the State: A History of Islamic Philanthropy in Indonesia (Leiden: Brill, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Atia, Mona, Building a House in Heaven: Pious Neoliberalism and Islamic Charity in Egypt(Minneapolis, Minn.: University of Minnesota Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9 In addition to the other works cited in this introduction, among the many examples of recent monographs are Bornstein, Erica, Disquieting Gifts: Humanitarianism in New Delhi (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2012)Google Scholar; Barnett, Michael, The Empire of Humanity: A History of Humanitarianism (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Ibrahim, Barbara Lethem and Sherif, Dina H., eds., From Charity to Social Change: Trends in Arab Philanthropy (Cairo: American University of Cairo Press, 2008)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Smith, Joanna Handlin, The Art of Doing Good: Charity in Late Ming China (Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

10 The most important original discussion of gifts is that of Marcel Mauss, published almost a century ago in French and then in various English translations. See Mauss, Marcel, The Gift. The Form and Reason for Exchange in Archaic Societies, trans. Halls, W. D., foreword by Douglas, Mary (London: Routledge, 1990)Google Scholar. Extensive discussions take up and critique Mauss’ claims. One recent example of this rich literature is Bornstein, Disquieting Gifts.

11 Mollat, Michel, The Poor in the Middle Ages: An Essay in Social History (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1968), 5Google Scholar.

12 Ener, Managing Egypt's Poor, x, xii.

13 See http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/bkgd.shtml (accessed 2 January 2014).

14 See http://www.un.org/en/preventgenocide/rwanda/about/bgsexualviolence.shtml (accessed 14 December 2013).

15 Within Middle East studies, one can point to the following: Petry, Carl F., “Class Solidarity vs. Gender Gain: Women as Custodians of Property in Later Medieval Egypt,” in Women in Middle Eastern History: Shifting Boundaries in Sex and Gender, ed. Keddie, Nikki R. and Baron, Beth (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1991), 122–42Google Scholar; and Beth Baron, “Islam, Philanthropy, and Political Culture in Interwar Egypt: The Activism of Labiba Ahmad,” in Bonner et al., Poverty and Charity, 239–54. Other foundational works include Ginzberg, Lori D., Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics, and Class in the Nineteenth-Century United States (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990)Google Scholar; and Koven, Seth and Michel, Sonya, “Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in Germany Great Britain, France and the United States, 1880–1920,” American Historical Review 95 (1990): 1076–1108CrossRefGoogle Scholar. More recent works include Quataert, Jean, Staging Philanthropy: Patriotic Women and the National Imagination in Dynastic Germany, 1813–1916 (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McCarthy, Kathleen, ed., Women, Philanthropy, and Civil Society (Bloomington, Ind.: Indiana University Press, 2001)Google Scholar; and Guy, Donna J., Women Build the Welfare State: Performing Charity and Creating Rights in Argentina, 1880–1955 (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.

16 This definition is taken from Tuğal, Cihan, Passive Revolution: Absorbing the Islamic Challenge to Capitalism (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2009), 267Google Scholar.

17 On these, see Singer, Charity in Islamic Societies, 90–100, 114–17.

18 On the impact of initiatives within the United States, for example, see the 2009 report by the American Civil Liberties Union at https://www.aclu.org/human-rights/report-blocking-faith-freezing-charity (accessed 15 December 2013).

19 Burr, J. Millard and Collins, Robert O, Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006)Google Scholar. Another book, more limited in scope but equally tendentious in its claims, is Levitt, Matthew, Hamas: Poverty, Charity and Terrorism in the Service of Jihad (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.