father, they acted like many other benefactors: it was customary for the founder of
a vakuf to appoint a relative as administrator or supervisor of its management, or a
person close to them; he or she might even take on the duty in person.
More research is needed into extant vakufnama s to get a clearer idea as to
whom female benefactors entrusted with the management and supervision
of their vakuf s, as well as on many other issues pertaining to women’s vakuf s.
Even then, however, we are not certain how reliable the results will be, unless a
possible relationship can be established between the benefactor and the person
she appointed as administrator or supervisor of her vakuf.
In the specific case of the benefactresses Hatidža Hatun and Mihri Hatun, we
do know that one entrusted the duty of administrator to her husband, the other
to her brother. Having founded their own vakuf s at the same time as Husein
Beg, Hatidža’s husband and Mihri’s brother, both benefactresses laid down
the condition that the amounts they were endowing should be managed by the
administrator of Husein Beg’s endowment.84 Further in the vakufnama, we read
that Husein Beg himself administered his own endowment. As he stipulated that
the duty should be transferred to his most honest child upon his death, and then
to his grandchild, we see that the same person within the family circle would
manage the two women’s joined vakuf s through generations to come.
Two other benefactresses, Šemsa Kaduna and Aiša of Mostar, left us imprecise
information on the persons they appointed to the duty of administrator, although
we do have their vakufnama s. Šemsa Kaduna’s deed, which is in fact incorporated
into the vakufnama of her husband Sinan Beg, does not refer to the administrator by
name but with the words “the aforementioned.”85 As Sinan Beg’s brother Ali Beg,
to whom the benefactor had entrusted the management of his own endowment,
was mentioned as administrator earlier in the vakufnama,86 it is probable that
Šemsa Kaduna accepted the same person as administrator of her rich vakuf. We
do not know with certainty who managed Aiša’s vakuf while she was still alive,
but we do know that she planned that duty to be shouldered by her husband if
she should die before him. Aiša laid down the condition that, upon her death, one
akçe per day should be given to her husband Hajji Hasan “when he manages the
vakuf as is his duty.” After Hajji Hasan’s death, according to the benefactress’s
stipulation, a judge would appoint a new administrator.87 These provisions give
rise to the idea that Aiša might have managed the vakuf herself during her lifetime,
but this is only speculation on our part.
We can see from some other examples that women did, indeed, manage vakuf s.
One such example is found in the 1604 Defter, where it is recorded that the sisters
Hanifa, Emiršaha, and Merdžana having founded a joint vakuf, they determined
that “Emiršaha shall be the administrator, and, upon her death, they should act
in accordance with the provisions in the vakufnama.”88 Unfortunately, these
benefactresses’ vakufnama is not extant, so that we do not know for whom the
position was intended after Emiršaha’s death. However, even this short record
in the Defter shows that after founding a vakuf, a woman could continue to take
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care of the institution’s management. As regards this vakuf, it is interesting to
note that while it was joined to the endowment of these benefactresses’ father, its
management was not transferred to the administrator of their father’s endowment,
nor, for example, to the administrator of the endowment of their brother Mehmed
Čelebi. Emiršaha seems to have managed only the property endowed by herself
and her sisters—at least the Defter testifies that she was appointed to that duty.
Another woman named Hafa performed the duty of administrator of the
vakuf founded by her father, Musa Čelebi. We learn this from a document
[ hüccet/ hujjat] dated 1563 and copied into the court records.89 According to that
document, Hafa’s sister Fatima and brother Mehmed thought that certain rights
to manage their father’s endowment also belonged to them, and went to court to
claim them. After the court hearing, it was established that Hafa had actually been
appointed administrator of her father’s vakuf consisting of a primary school, and
that she had been discharging the duty correctly for seven years. By the court’s
ruling, she was to continue performing that duty. We know nothing about this
sixteenth-century family beyond the information recorded in the court document;
the reason for the benefactor’s decision to entrust one of his daughters with the
duty of administrator even though he had a son will remain unknown.
Female descendents did sometimes take over the management of a family
vakuf when there were no male descendents to carry out the duty, and examples
from some other vakuf s show that this was the practice in Bosnia too. We find
evidence of the practice even in the 1604 Defter, in a record concerning the
benefactor Hajji Mehmed, son of Sinan. This person had a mescid and a small
school built in Sarajevo, and entrusted all the services of the endowment to his
sons and then to their best-qualified sons. In addition, if his male descendents
died out, these duties were to be entrusted to his female descendents.90 In Fatima
Ašida’s vakufnama, we read that she appointed Mustafa Efendi, son of Ahmed
Efendi, as administrator. Upon his death, the duty was to be transferred to his
male descendents; if there were no males among his descendents, then according
to the benefactress’s provisions, the duty of administrator should be transferred
to Mustafa’s female descendents, from generation to generation ( ve ma’âzallahü
ta’âla münkarız olursa mûmâ ileyh Mustafâ efendinün evlâd-ı inâsi batnen ba’de
batnin mütevellî olalar).91
The supervisor of the management of a vakuf had fewer duties and less work
than the administrator, and accordingly he was given a smaller salary. In smaller
vakuf s—those joined to a larger endowment—the person performing that duty in
the larger vakuf could be appointed supervisor of the smaller ones. This is why a
supervisor was not directly appointed in some vakufnama s, while the appointment
of an administrator was not ommitted.
When a supervisor was appointed, it was necessary to provide for his salary,
and that meant higher expenses that might constitute a burden for a vakuf with
limited funds. This may be exactly the reason why Đulizar Hatun entrusted the
duty of supervisor collectively to all the people coming on a regular basis to pray
in the mescid to which she had joined her own vakuf, founded with the modest
Filan, Women Founders oF Pious endoWments
117
sum of 1,300 akçe.92 On the other hand, although Sinan Beg, founder of a rich
endowment, certainly did not have to worry about limiting expenses, he still left
the duty of supervisor of his endowment to his sons, grandsons, freed slaves, and
relatives, from generation to generation, setting the condition that they
should
perform this function without a fee. As Sinan Beg’s vakufnama also contains
the document establishing the endowment of his wife Šemsa Kaduna, who had
accepted the person managing her husband’s endowment as the administrator of
her own, Sinan Beg’s condition concerning the supervisor also related to Šemsa
Kaduna’s vakuf. In any case, in the part of the vakufnama related to Šemsa
Kaduna’s endowment, there is no mention of a supervisor’s services.
In founding her rich endowment, Shahdidar envisaged the services of a
supervisor, and the salary for his services was to be one akçe. We can read in the
vakufnama that Shahdidar herself took on that duty: wa sharatat an-nazārata
li nafsihā an-nafīsati mā dāmat fī hayātihā.93 Here, the benefactress set the
condition that after her death, the duty should be taken over by the supervisor of
the endowment of her husband, Husrev Beg, just as she determined that the service
of the administrator should also be taken over by the administrator of Husrev
Beg’s endowment after the death of Sinanudin Yusuf Voivoda, whom she had
appointed to her endowment.94 The vakufnama mentions Shahdidar’s condition
that, when lending money from her endowment, the administrator should act
with the knowledge of the supervisor, suggesting that she, as supervisor, actively
participated in the management of her vakuf.
Shahdidar’s example is not unique in showing that women took on the duty
of vakuf supervisor. We find further evidence in a text relating that Murad the
tailor had endowed 3,600 akçe for a vakuf. The benefactor had appointed the
administrator of his endowment, and the court subsequently appointed Aiša,
daughter of the late Murad the tailor, as the administrator’s supervisor, stipulating
that “the aforementioned administrator is not to pay out nor receive any money
without her knowledge. Recorded in 1565.”95
Conclusion
We can only offer a general study of the women who founded pious endowments
in the early period of Ottoman Bosnia, for we face the problem of missing or
insufficient sources. The further back we go, the smaller the number of preserved
sources. For this reason, the present study is based on a relatively modest number
of sources: the Defter—a comprehensive inventory of the Bosnian Sancak from
1604—and several vakufnama s—court documents pertaining to the foundation
of religious endowments. These sources offer us limited insight into the topic at
hand, as a very small number of vakufnama s have been preserved from the first
two centuries (the fifteenth and sixteenth) of Ottoman Bosnia, and the Defter
contains only basic information on each endowment.
Since women are mentioned as benefactresses in both the Defter and the
vakufnama s, it is clear that they participated in the social life of the community
through the founding of endowments. This implies that women in Bosnia during
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the first centuries of Ottoman rule owned property and disposed of it independently,
some donating their property to charity: they could freely go to court with the
intention of establishing a foundation.
As in a number of other cases uncovered by researchers, in the first centuries
of Ottoman Bosnia too women founded vakuf s mostly with cash assets. The
number of those who endowed real estate is much smaller. The amounts women
endowed varied, showing that endowments were founded by both wealthy and
relatively modest women. The wealthy ones were related to men of high social
status in their communities. By the end of the sixteenth century, the richest vakuf s
in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina were founded by Shahdidar and Šemsa
Kaduna. The former had been the wife of the Bosnian governor Husrev Beg,
the greatest benefactor of the city of Sarajevo; the latter had been the sister of
Mehmed Pasha Sokolović, the Bosnian-born Ottoman grand vezir.
Within her Sarajevo endowment, Shahdidar built a primary school and a
mescid known to have existed until the nineteenth century. All the other women
about whom we found information in the aforementioned sources joined their
endowments to larger ones. Šemsa Kaduna did so by joining her rich monetary
endowment (80,000 akçe) to the one founded by her husband. The amount donated
by Hatidža Hatun was also considerably higher than the donations from other
women (15,016 akçe); she too joined her endowment to the larger one established
by her husband.
The most common amount we have encountered as the capital sum in women’s
vakuf s is 3,000 akçe—also the most common amount in men’s monetary vakuf s
of the period. Unfortunately, we do not know much about the status of the women
who founded vakuf s of this value. We can see that some of them belonged to
families in which some other members—fathers, brothers, or husbands—were
also benefactors. These women joined their vakuf s to the ones founded by their
relatives.
However, the number of benefactresses about whom we know nothing
save their names—such as Đulizar Hatun, Hanifa Hatun, Kadriya Hatun, and
Shehsuvar Hatun—is quite significant. In some cases, the names or professions
of their husbands were recorded alongside their own names, but as there is often
no title that would indicate the social status of their husbands, it is likely that they
were of humble origin. If our hypothesis is correct, then women of modest means
also willingly donated their property to charity. The question that poses itself in
connection with the women whose husbands are known is whether or not they
donated their property to religious endowments independently of their husbands.
If the name of the benefactor Shahdidar is registered in the Defter specifically
as the wife of the “late” Husrev Beg, can we assume that Hajji Kemal, the tailor
Iskender, or the confectioner were alive when their wives founded their vakuf s? If
so, then women acted independently of their husbands when making the decision
to found vakuf s.
Our modest research has also shown that women in the period under study took
care of the management of vakuf s as administrators or supervisors. Of course we
Filan, Women Founders oF Pious endoWments
119
are speaking of vakuf s that they had founded themselves, or of those founded by
their own fathers. Women certainly did sometimes decide to perform the duties
of administrator or supervisor in their own vakuf s. In the case of parental vakuf s,
the appointment was probably made by the benefactor. Thus a court found that
the appointment of Hafa Hatun, who managed her father’s vakuf, had been valid.
Aiša, daughter of the tailor Murad, became the supervisor of her father’s vakuf
when, upon his death, the court entrusted her with the duty. Nevertheless, it will
remain unknown if that was the court’s decision or her father’s instructions in his
will. As far as the research reported here is concerned, many questions remain
open and to answer them would require more comprehensive research. Deeper
insight into the topic, at least into the later centuries of Ottoman Bosnia, could be
gained through t
he analysis of existing vakufnama s. We endeavored here to point
in that direction by reviewing two specific vakufnama s, one from the seventeenth
century, and the other from the nineteenth.
Notes
1. The word vakf comes from the Arabic waqafa, meaning “halt” or “suspension.”
Such a property is excluded from trade and becomes the financial basis of
an endowment. Proceeds yielded within the endowment are appropriated
exclusively for charity. In modern Turkish, endowments are denoted by the
word vakıf. In Bosnian, the word vakuf has been retained and denotes an
endowment founded during the period when the territory of today’s Bosnia
and Herzegovina made up part of the Ottoman Empire, i.e. an endowment
founded in accordance with Islamic legal principles. Therefore, we will use
the word vakuf herein.
2. Balagija 1933: 8.
3. The ability to dispose of property is defined as follows: the bequeather must
not be under guardianship; must be of age, and of sound mind; must not have
been proclaimed prodigal by a court; and must not be bankrupt. (Ibid., 8–9.)
4. Ibid., 9–10.
5. Ibid., 5–7.
6. For other studies on the role of Ottoman women in the establishment and
administration of pious endowments, see e.g. Baer 1983; Duran 1990; Fay
1997; Meriwether 1997; Singer 2002: 71–98; and Deguilhem 2003.
7. The Defter-i Mufassal-i Liva-i Bosna is kept in the Kuyûd-i Kadîme series
at the General Directorate of the State Land Registry and Land-Ownership
Records of the Republic of Turkey in Ankara (T.C. Tapu ve Kadastro Genel
Müdürlüğü). The Defter was written in three large volumes and is registered
under the following numbers: Volume I: 477; Volume II: 478; Volume III:
479. ( Opširni popis, “Uvod,” xxiii). The translation of the Defter into Bosnian
is in four volumes produced by Adem Handžić (Volumes I/1 and I/2), Amina
Kupusović (Volume II), and Snježana Buzov (Volume III). In this paper, we
used this translation.
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8. In the translation of the Defter, the list of endowments is in Volume I/2: 481–
511.
9. There is a growing literature on Ottoman women’s access to the courts. See
Women in the Ottoman Balkans: Gender, Culture and History Page 22
