WAQF, ECONOMY AND FINANCE IN THE OTTOMAN CIVILIZATION OF THE BALKANS

Abstract

Although it has inherited the whole experience of the prevailing civilizations, every civilization has its own conception on human being and society. Again, every civilization builds an institutional structure according to the conception of this human being and society. This conception is manifested both in every aspects of daily life and in the institutional structure from military to economics, from culture to politics, and from literature to financial space. Taking into account their previous experiences the Ottoman civilization in the Balkans has also been institutionalized and developed according to its conception, worldviews and values adopted in order to reach the centered people of the country and the societ. It can be said that after the Ottomans moved from Anatolia to the Balkans, they built a Waqf Civilization in Europe. With the Ottoman Balkan conquests, the obvious effects of this waqf concept affected the supplying the needs of people and societies such as cultural, religious, social, economic, commercial and financial, in the Balkan geography. The Ottoman Empire, which included the Cash waqfs (Vakf-ı Nukud) for this understanding of the foundation and its conception, played a prominent role in the institutionalization of Islamic economics and finance from the early modern times to the present times.