Book Read Free

Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History

Page 19

by Amila Buturovic

be used for the final purpose of the endowment. Some benefactors retained a

  part of the vakuf for themselves and their family, and immediately earmarked a

  part for religious, charitable, and social institutions. Those were known as semi-

  family vakuf s [ yarı âilevî vakıf]. After a time, usually after the vakuf founders’

  descendents had passed away, the latter types of vakuf (family and semi-family

  endowments) would be transformed into the former type of vakuf, the vakf-ı hayrî.

  In this respect, we can say that the foundation of a pious endowment relies on two

  inseparable entities: one is a concrete legal act in which an individual declares

  that in the Name of God, he or she endows a part of his or her property; the other

  is the aim of the endowment—that the endowed property should serve Islamic-

  religious, cultural-educational, and humanitarian purposes.

  Giving away part of one’s property to charity so that other people should draw

  support from it is an act intended to please God. Islamic jurists found a basis for

  the vakuf legislation in the hadith s (oral traditions of the Prophet Muhammad).5

  That would be a sufficient motive for any Muslim believer to do a religiously

  commendable deed—to found a vakuf by donating a part of his or her property

  to charity. As an endowment founded in accordance with religious principles, the

  vakuf was a contribution first to the religious and simultaneously to the social and

  economic aspects of the community where it was founded, irrespective of the

  value of the assets at its disposal.

  A benefactor who was able to endow relatively large assets would stipulate that

  they be used for the construction of places of worship, schools, hospitals, libraries,

  bridges, public baths, public kitchens, public drinking fountains, or hostelries. In

  the legal foundational act itself, the benefactor fixed the amount of funds he or

  she anticipated would be needed for the maintenance of the building(s) within the

  endowment and the salaries to be paid to vakuf officials. Such vakuf s were a direct

  contribution to the common good, and were called müessesât-ı hayriye.

  Another type of vakuf was the asl-i vakf. These would be founded with smaller

  funds and combined with others. In that way they contributed to increasing the

  assets of a larger endowment and to its growth. The more assets a vakuf had, the

  more it could contribute to the religious and social life of the community.

  Religious endowments were founded and developed throughout the Ottoman

  Empire. In particular, they were established in the territory of present-day Bosnia

  and Herzegovina, which was part of the Ottoman Empire from the fifteenth

  century to the end of the nineteenth.

  As the vakuf played an important role in the religious, social, and economic life

  of the Ottoman Empire, the question arises as to what Ottoman women’s attitude

  Filan, Women Founders oF Pious endoWments

  101

  towards pious foundations may have been. In this paper, we shall address this

  issue, taking as an example the area of today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina.6

  Certainly, the most reliable sources for studying the institution in general

  are vakufnama s [in Turkish, vakıfnâme or vakf iye]—documents concerning the

  foundation and purpose of endowments. How available are the documents that

  would testify to the foundation of the vakuf over a five-century period? How many

  of these documents have been preserved to this day? Where can they be found?

  These queries themselves show that the topic studied here can be addressed only

  from the starting point we have at our disposal, and which, by this mere fact, can

  provide only partial clues to the subject at hand. Our approach is as justified as the

  point of reference is reliable.

  Our point of reference is Opširni popis Bosanskog sandžaka iz 1604. godine

  [Comprehensive register of the Bosnian Sancak/ Sanjak of 1604] (2000), which

  is a translation into Bosnian of the Defter-i Mufassal-i Liva-i Bosna (hereafter

  referred to as Defter).7 This volume contains a register of the vakuf s which had

  been established by the end of the sixteenth century in the Bosnian Sancak, a

  territorial and administrative unit of the Ottoman Empire that comprised a major

  part of today’s Bosnia and Herzegovina.8 In this register, we searched for records

  of women who had founded a vakuf in this early period of Ottoman Bosnia.

  Records in land registers are very short. The Defter is only a record of data;

  it does not explain or comment on it. Nevertheless, from the recorded data, we

  can gain some basic insight into our topic—specifically, that a number of women

  were registered among the people who had donated their property to charity by

  1604 and thus founded a vakuf.

  These data enable us to make certain assumptions. For instance, when we

  look at the records on women as founders of vakuf s from the perspective of the

  definition of a vakuf in Islamic law, we can say that in the early period of Ottoman

  Bosnia, women were able to own property and dispose of it by their own free will.

  We can also surmise that women had access to the courts, since the contract for

  the foundation of a vakuf was concluded at court, i.e. before a kadı [ qadi].9

  Who were the women founders of vakuf s? What did they endow? What did

  they endow their property for? Starting from these questions, we shall study the

  records in the Defter pertaining to female benefactors in Bosnia in the fifteenth

  and sixteenth centuries.

  Women Founders of Independent Endowments

  The 1604 Defter includes a record for the endowment of Shahdidar, the wife of

  the deceased Husrev Beg in the city of Sarajevo. The value of the endowed assets

  was 115,000 akçe (aspers), intended for the construction of a mescid [ masjid] (a

  place of worship) and a mekteb (a school).10 By tracing this record in the Defter,

  we tried to collect more information about the endowment from the sixteenth

  century established by a woman named Shahdidar.

  Some important information is found in the same Defter. In the register of

  quarters in the city of Sarajevo, there is one formed around “the mescid built by

  102

  Women in the ottoman Balkans

  Gazi Husrev Beg’s wife.”11 It is known that in the conception of Islamic towns,

  mescid s were the nuclei around which quarters developed. Therefore such quarters

  were named after the mescid that had marked the beginning of the quarter, while

  the mescid itself was known by the name of the benefactor. Religious rituals

  were held, and lectures on religious and moral life were delivered in mescid s,

  which were also centers of social life. Communal issues were resolved there at

  the neighborhood level. The existence of a record in the 1604 Defter refering to

  a quarter whose centre was the mescid known under the name of “Gazi Husrev

  Beg’s wife” shows that this mescid had already been built within Shahdidar’s

  endowment. Indeed, Shahdidar was the wife of Gazi Husrev Beg, Bosnia’s best-

  known governor.12 We find confirmation thereof in another extant document.

  Sicil [ sijill] (court record from the Ottoman period) No. 1 in the Gazi Husrev

  Beg library collection of archive documents contains the transcript
of a vakufnama

  that has been identified as the vakuf of Shahdidar, Gazi Husrev Beg’s wife.13 This

  identification was not straight-forward, and was made by Fehim Dž. Spaho while

  preparing a translation of the document from Arabic into Bosnian.14 The difficulty

  was that the transcript, comprised of five folios in the court records (from 38 to

  42), contains no mention of two important pieces of information. First, the name

  of the benefactress is absent, though it is clearly understood from the Arabic text

  that it is a woman ( wâqifa, waqafat wa habasat wa sabbalat—38/17).15 Second,

  the end of the vakufnama was not copied, so we cannot reliably establish the time

  it was drawn up.16

  In the vakufnama transcript, we read that the benefactress whose endowment

  occasioned the drawing up of this document had donated the amount of 100,000

  akçe ( wa jamī’a mablaghin mi’ati alfi dirhamin—39/10). She had ordered the

  construction of a mescid with that money in a part of Sarajevo ( wa dhālike jamī’

  masjidin banathu wa shayyadathu wa a’lathu fī mahallati min mahallāt dāri al-

  guzāt Sarāy—39/3–4), and also specified that 3,000 akçe should be set aside from

  the endowed amount to build a school by the mescid ( wa sharatat an yubnā bayt

  at-ta’llim bi qurbi al-masjidi al-mastūri fī dāhili haramihi bi salāsi ālāfi dirham

  min al-mablaghi al-mazbūri—39/12–13). In addition to the relatively large

  amount of 100,000 akçe, the benefactress also endowed a house in the city of

  Sarajevo ( wa dhālike jamī’ al-manzil al-kāyin fī baldati al-mazbūra al-mahrūsa fī

  mahallati al-jāmi’i al-marhūm Yahya pasha—41/6). She specified that the house

  would be her home during her lifetime, and that after her death, it was to be sold

  for the amount of 15,000 akçe ( yubā’u dhālike al-manzil al-mawqūf al-mazbūr bi

  hamsata ‘ashara alf dirham—41/10–11). So, the value of the endowment under

  this vakufnama, 115,000 akçe, is identical to the value of the endowment which,

  according to the Defter, had been founded by Shahdidar. Other facts are also

  common to the vakufnama and the Defter: both sources record that

  1. The imam, the chief official leading the prayers in the mescid, was to receive

  4 akçe per day as salary ( wa li al-imāmi kulla yawmin arba’a darāhima—

  40/13);

  Filan, Women Founders oF Pious endoWments

  103

  2. The müezzin [ mu’azzin], the official reciting the call to prayer, was to receive

  2 akçe per day as salary ( wa li al-mu’azzini kulla yawmin dirhamayni—

  40/14);

  3. The mu‘allim, the official teaching children at school, was to receive 3 akçe

  per day as salary ( wa li al-mu’allimi kulla yawmin salāsata darāhim—40/14).

  In the interest of space, we shall not enumerate all the identical items in the

  two sources; as mentioned above, their agreement has been demonstrated by

  Spaho.17 On that basis, we are able to deduce how, in sixteenth-century Sarajevo,

  a wealthy woman—the wife of a state official—formed her pious endowment by

  endowing the property at her disposal. This woman’s vakuf served, on the one

  hand, a religious purpose—a mescid was built and maintained; and on the other,

  an educational purpose—a school was built and maintained. We cannot neglect

  the economic purpose of Shahdidar’s vakuf either, as salaries were provided for

  several officials from its proceeds. Finally, the social purpose of this institution

  is seen in the fact that a quarter soon developed around the mescid. By founding

  the endowment, Shahdidar made her own contribution to improving life in

  Sarajevo at the time of its development from a provincial town into a city. The

  rich endowment of Shahdidar’s husband Husrev Beg certainly contributed most

  to this aspect of Sarajevo’s development.

  Shahdidar earmarked, probably at the time of the foundation of the vakuf, the

  major part of the property she endowed (100,000 akçe) for the construction of a

  religious and religious-educational institution. She retained, until her death, the

  right of use over a smaller part of the property endowed for the vakuf, namely the

  real estate comprising a house.

  Was Shahdidar the only woman to have founded a rich pious endowment

  (including the construction of buildings) in Bosnia before 1604? The 1604 Defter

  suggests that this might be so; however, other historical sources show that in

  the neighborhood of Mejtaš of the city of Sarajevo, a woman named Dudi Bula

  (or Tuti Bula) commissioned the construction of a mescid in the years between

  1528 and 1540.18 That mescid is indeed recorded in an older defter dated 1565.19

  However, that record provides no specific information concerning the endowment

  of the woman to whom it refers as Dudi Hatun—we only know that there was a

  place of worship under that name at the time in Sarajevo, and two more sources

  testify to that.20 Nevertheless, as they refer to later centuries, we do not have any

  indication of the time when Dudi Bula’s mescid was built. If Mujezinović’s claim

  is correct that this mescid was erected after 1528 and prior to 1540, then it is older

  than the one built by Shahdidar. So far, nothing is known about the benefactress

  Dudi Bula; it is worth mentioning that according to Mujezinović, the title bula

  suggests that she was a religious teacher.21 Any other claim about her would be

  speculative.

  104

  Women in the ottoman Balkans

  Endowments of Women Within Other Endowments

  The survival and functioning of buildings constructed within a vakuf depended on

  funds available for their maintenance. The mescid built by Shahdidar continued

  to exist from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth.22 Dudi Bula’s mescid, which

  may be even older than Shahdidar’s, existed until the early twentieth century.23

  Certainly these buildings had to have been refurbished over such a long period of

  time. It is difficult to know today how long Shahdidar’s funds may have lasted.

  What is known is that her mescid burnt down in a great fire that broke out in

  Sarajevo in 1697, and that it was subsequently reconstructed by the inhabitants

  of that quarter with state support.24 Later, the mescid was probably maintained

  with funds from smaller vakuf s ( asl-i vakf) which had been joined to this one.25

  It is also known that Dudi Bula’s mescid burnt down in the same fire.26 Although

  we do not have reliable information concerning the reconstruction of Dudi Bula’s

  mescid, it is certain that it too was reconstructed with funds from smaller vakuf s

  and similar contributions.

  Just as the large vakuf s ( müessesât-ı hayriye) were important for the religious-

  educational, social, and economic life of the quarter in which they were founded,

  the smaller vakuf s were equally important for the survival and functioning of the

  large vakuf s for the communal good. Judging from the 1604 Defter, women from

  that time contributed to the communal good by founding smaller vakuf s, which

  they joined to existing larger ones.27 From the modest amount of information

  contained in the Defter, it is hard to know how the benefactors—women or

  men—may have decided to which large vakuf they would contribute
. In several

  cases, nonetheless, we can discern some hints.

  Nefisa and Hanifa—their names recorded in the Defter—were Havadže

  Kemal’s daughters. Nefisa endowed the amount of 2,500 akçe, and Hanifa

  3,000 akçe. These women joined the vakuf s they founded to Havadže Kemal’s.28

  This benefactor had endowed funds for the construction of a masjid in the city

  of Sarajevo, in the quarter where he lived.29 From these records, it is not hard

  to reach the conclusion that Nefisa and Hanifa joined their endowments to that

  founded by their father. If Nefisa and Hanifa were sisters, then İbrahim must have

  been their brother: the Defter records that he was Havadže Kemal’s son. İbrahim

  also endowed 4,000 akçe, and joined his vakuf to Havadže Kemal’s.30 These data

  suggest that by endowing assets of their own and founding smaller vakuf s, the

  children contributed to the larger endowment founded by their father. One more

  fact that lends support to the hypothesis that these three individuals were closely

  related—i.e. that all three were Havadže Kemal’s direct descendents—is that

  their vakuf s were recorded in the same Defter, from which we can deduce that

  they must have founded their vakuf s at about the same time.31 They were joined

  by another benefactor, Mehmed Čelebi, whom the 1604 Defter records as a son

  of Havadže Kemal; it states that he endowed funds for the building of two public

  drinking fountains: one in the vicinity of Havadže Kemal’s mescid, and the other

  in the vicinity of Havadže Kemal’s house.32 According to these records, Mehmed

  Čelebi used his own funds to establish a vakuf, one that improved the quality

  Filan, Women Founders oF Pious endoWments

  105

  of life in the quarter where his parents’ house was located, and where his father

  had commissioned the construction of a place of worship. If the four benefactors

  mentioned above were Havadže Kemal’s children, then this is an example of a

  case in sixteenth-century Sarajevo where descendents, both male and female, used

  part of their property to found smaller vakuf s and thereby helped and promoted

  larger ones that had been founded by their father.33 This way the descendents

  continued to do God-pleasing deeds, and, following the example of their parents,

  stayed connected with their family of origin.

 

‹ Prev