Ḥabs, a legal term that is generally synonymous with waqf except in Twelver Shiʿi jurisprudence. It has widest use in the sense of waqf among Mālikī jurists. Ḥabs is a verbal noun with the literal meaning of ‘to withhold, restrict, detain’, and is the opposite of takhliya (‘granting unrestricted access’) (al-Jawharī, 3/915; Ibn Manẓūr, 6/44). In modern usage, the term ḥubs or ḥubus (especially in North Africa, and Fr. habous) is used to signify a pious endowment, while ḥabs tends to refer to the act of sequestrati…