OTTOWAQF investigates how charitable foundations shaped state building in the Ottoman Empire between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. Foundations controlled vast swaths of land and property across the empire to support mosques, schools, hospitals, and much else. As a result, they formed the most widespread and powerful social institutions within the empire and in Islamic countries more generally. Yet their role in state formation is overlooked. OTTOWAQF is examining the political and economic impact of foundations on the state to develop a new model of state power in the Ottoman Empire that takes into account the participation of a wide range of social actors from across the empire in the development of the early modern Ottoman state.
