Seadet-i Ebediyye - Endless Bliss Fifth Fascicle

money,] as well can be devoted as a waqf. So is the case with
everything that is measured by capacity or by weight. And so also
is the case with other kinds of waqf that have been customary, such
as coffins, benches on which corpses are washed, covers spread on
coffins, copies of the Qur’ân al-kerîm and other books. Things that
are measured by capacity or by weight are sold, the money earned
thereby and money that belongs to a waqf are lent to poor people
and given to a tradesman as a capital in a mode of (investment
termed) mudâraba (sleeping-silent-partnership); thereby the
profit earned will be a shared income. The profit that falls to the
share of the waqf is dispensed as alms to the poor. Equivalent of
the money devoted as a waqf should always remain under the
command of that waqf. It cannot be used for making a sale or
repaying a debt. Wheat is devoted as a waqf on the understanding
that it will be lent as a loan to villagers so that they may sow their
land with it and repay their debt out of the new crop. A cow is
devoted as a waqf on the understanding that its milk will be
dispensed to the poor. It is not permissible to devote things like
household goods as a waqf, since it is not a customary practice to
devote them. Income of a waqf is spent primarily on maintenance
and secondarily on the stipends of the servants and
(superintendents called) nâzir.
It is stated as follows in Ibni ’Âbidîn: “Waqf means a mukallaf [1]
person’s devoting the benefits of a certain thing that has value and
which is his/her personal proverty to all or certain poor people,
Muslims and (non-Muslim citizens called) dhimmîs alike, without
stipulating any conditions. According to the Imâmeyn, (i.e. Imâm
Abû Yûsuf and Imâm Muhammad, two blessed mujtahids
educated by Imâm A’zam Abû Hanîfa,) property that has been
devoted as a waqf is no longer the devotee’s property. Waqf in not
an act of worship; it is an act of qurbat. (Please see the initial pages
of the first fascicle, the thirty-fourth chapter of the second fascicle,
the seventh and the twenty-fourth chapters of the fourth fascicle,
and the seventeenth chapter of the current fascicle of Endless
Bliss, for the difference.) Mubâhs (permitted acts) done for the
purpose of earning thawâb are called (acts of) qurbat. It is an
essential condition that it be stated that the property devoted as a
waqf must be utilized only or lastly by a mosque or by poor people.
[1] A mukallaf person is a Muslim who is free and sane and has reached
the age of discretion and puberty and therefore is fully and
individually subject to the commandments and prohibitions of Islam.
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