Prof. Dr. Hans-Georg Ebert

Property rights in general, and land law in particular, are among the legal areas in Islamic countries that exhibit excessively large gaps in academic research. This is all the more remarkable because global and regional conflicts challenge the formation of ownership structure. It can be assumed that the dispute in the MENA region over building land, agricultural land and pastureland will be aggravated in the future.

Even in pre-Islamic times, in the Sasanian Empire, endowments were created with a religious background, to realise two main objectives: First, the financial support and protection of religious institutions, second, the preservation or transfer of assets within a family or tribe. Both goals seem to contradict each other but, looking more closely, there are many interconnections. The project will investigate the reform process and the inclusion of religious endowments in the national legal systems, both from the historical point of view and from that of contemporary trends. The currently valid legal regulations are primarily oriented to the Egyptian scholar Muhammad Qadrî Pâshâ (d. 1886), who was not an Azhar scholar, but acted as Minister of Education in Egypt. In addition to his legal and Islamic education in Cairo, he lived and worked in France for a fairly long time. His compilation of waqf-law, which he published among other compilations, can be seen as a legal source for the national laws of Islamic countries. Hence, standards and methods can be derived from it to reform the religious endowments to strengthen their social responsibility. The first step of the project is the translation of a legal text that was printed in 1894 in Bûlâq (Cairo) following an Arabic manuscript (646 articles). This translation work is to be supplemented by an appropriate commentary. On this basis, the project will examine how religious endowments can act in an objectively secular environment and what the requirements are to empower them to solve social problems. Furthermore, the project will contribute to a better understanding of the contradictions, obstacles and solutions in the land law of Arab countries. Whether and how religious endowments can promote such a reform process will be specifically analysed.