2025/11/05 by Dominik Krell
Business, Management and Accounting · Social Sciences · #Islamic Finance and Banking Studies #Islamic Studies and History #Socioeconomic Development in MENA
paper · doi:10.1163/15685209-12341655
crossref issued 2025/11/05 · crossref published 2025/11/05 · crossref published-print 2025/11/05 · openalex publication_date 2025/11/05 · openalex created_date 2025/11/11 · crossref created 2025/11/11 · crossref deposited 2025/11/11 · crossref indexed 2026/07/25 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/26
Abstract The institution of the family endowment ( waqf ) has been abolished in almost all Muslim countries. One important exception is Saudi Arabia. Although Islamic jurists ( ʿulamāʾ ) in the kingdom consider family waqfs permissible, they are critical of the institution because it is often used to deprive women of their inheritance. Based on Saudi legal literature and court decisions, this article explores the legal discourse surrounding the family waqf . I show that while the debate on the family waqf in other parts of the Arab world was dominated by the rise of the modern state, capitalism and European colonialism, the criticism of the family waqf in Saudi Arabia predates these discourses and emerged independently from the thought of Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1792). Subsequent Saudi jurists did not simply repeat Ibn ʿAbd al-Wahhāb’s critique. Instead, they regularly diverged from it and from the Ḥanbalī school more generally. This challenges conventional descriptions of Saudi jurists as being monochromatically “Wahhabi-Hanbali” in their legal thinking.