Poverty and Charity in Middle Eastern Contexts

Edited by Michael Bonner, Mine Ener, and Amy Singer

Subjects: Middle East Studies
Series: SUNY series in the Social and Economic History of the Middle East
Paperback : 9780791457382, 358 pages, July 2003
Hardcover : 9780791457375, 358 pages, July 2003

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations

Note to the Reader

Introduction

Part I: Entitlement and Obligation

1. Poverty and Charity in the Rise of Islam
Michael Bonner

2. Status-Based Definitions of Need in Early Islamic Zakat and Maintenance Laws
Ingrid Mattson

3. The Foreign Jewish Poor in Medieval Egypt
Mark R. Cohen

4 "Prices Are in God's Hands": The Theory and Practice of Price Control in the Medieval Islamic World
Adam Sabra

Part II: Institutions

5. The Functional Aspects of Medieval Islamic Hospitals
Yasser Tabbaa

6. Charity and Hospitality: Hospitals in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period
Miri Shefer

7. Charity, the Poor, and Distribution of Alms in Ottoman Algiers
Miriam Hoexter

Part III: The State as Benefactor

8. Living on the Margins of Charity: Coping with Poverty in an Ottoman Provincial City
Eyal Ginio

9. The Charity of the Khedive
Mine Ener

10. Imperial Gifts and Sultanic Legitimation during the Late Ottoman Empire, 1876–1909
Nadir Özbek

Part IV: Changing Worlds

11. Al-Tahtawi on Poverty and Welfare
Juan R. I. Cole

12. Islam, Philanthropy, and Political Culture in Interwar Egypt: The Activism of Labiba Ahmad
Beth Baron

13. "The Child Question": The Politics of Child Welfare in Early Republican Turkey
Kathryn Libal

Part V: Welfare as Politics

14. Islamic Redistribution through Zakat: Historical Record and Modern Realities
Timur Kuran

15. Charity's Legacies: Reconsideration of Ottoman Imperial Endowment-Making
Amy Singer

Conclusion
Natalie Zemon Davis

Contributors

Index

Addresses the ideals and institutions through which Middle Eastern societies have confronted poverty and the poor.

Description

Offering insights and analysis in a field that has only recently come into existence, this book explores the ideals and institutions through which Middle Eastern societies—from the rise of Islam in the seventh century C.E. to the present day—have confronted poverty and the poor. By introducing new sources and presenting familiar ones with new questions, the contributors examine ideas about poverty and the poor, ideals and practices of charity, and state and private initiatives of poor relief over this extensive time span. They avoid easy generalizations about Islam and the Middle East as they seek to set the ideals and practices in comparative perspective.

Michael Bonner is Professor of Medieval Islamic History at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He is the author of Aristocratic Violence and Holy War: Studies in the Jihad and the Arab-Byzantine Frontier. Mine Ener (1965–2003) was Associate Professor of History at Villanova University. Amy Singer is Professor in the Department of Middle Eastern and African History at Tel Aviv University. She is the author of Palestinian Peasants and Ottoman Officials: Rural Administration around Sixteenth-Century Jerusalem and Constructing Ottoman Beneficence: An Imperial Soup Kitchen in Jerusalem, both also published by SUNY Press, and Charity in Islamic Societies.