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1. Europa 1.1. Begriff und mittelalterliche GrundlagenDer Begriff S. (engl. charitable trust, franz. fondation) entzieht sich einer einfachen Definition, zumal in europ. nzl. Perspektive, doch bezeichnet er im engeren, v. a. rechtlichen Sinne zum einen die dauerhafte Widmung eines Vermögens für einen vom Stifter bestimmten Zweck (vgl. Fideikommiss), zum anderen die mit diesem Kapital geschaffene Institution. Im weiteren Sinne ist damit jedoch ein vielgestaltiges soziales Phänomen angesprochen, das auch als »Wohltätigkeit«, »Philanthropie« und »Mäzenatentum« (Mäzen…

1. Europa 1.1. Charakteristika Die S. ist ein semiprivates Verfahren der Erhebung von Steuern: Für eine an die Behörden gezahlte Pauschalsumme darf der Steuerpächter (= Stp.) diese auf eigene Rechnung eintreiben. In der Regel setzten Stp. hierfür ihr eigenes Personal ein; möglich waren aber auch Organisationsformen, bei denen die Regierung Büro und Beamte dafür stellte. Die Stp. handelten den entsprechenden Vertrag entweder selbst aus oder bekamen ihn bei einer öffentlichen Auktion [1].Die S. war eine in der Frühen Nz. weit verbreitete Praxis und eine Spezialform v…

1. Europe 1.1. DescriptionTax farming is a semi-private arrangement for collecting taxes (Tax). In return for a lump sum paid to the authorities, the tax farmer is allowed to collect taxes on his own behalf. As a rule, tax farmers employed their own personnel, but forms of organization in which the government provided the office and civil servants for the collection were also possible. Tax farmers either negotiated their own contracts or obtained them in a public auction [1].Tax farming was a widespead practice in the first centuries of the early modern period, as a s…

1. Europe ​1.1. Terminology and medieval backgroundThe term charitable trust (German  Stiftung, French  fondation) eludes any simple definition, especially in the context of early modern Europe, but in the narrower (primarily legal) sense it denotes both the permanent dedication of assets to a purpose determined by the donor (“put into trust”; see Fideicommissum) and the institution created with this capital. In the broader sense, however, it denotes a diverse social phenomenon, which can also be called “be…

Archives and chanceries existed at various courts in the Arab world at various times and are documented as early as the Umayyad era. This article discusses the history of archival holdings in the Arab world, with a focus on state-related documents written in Arabic. There is ample evidence from a wide range of sources that written documentation of not only matters of state but also business, institutional, and personal affairs, was a common practice in the Arab world, continuing pre-Islamic precedents and transforming them. There is also …

II. In the Arab Lands 2. In Syria. A survey of the history of endowments in Syria, in the geographical sense of Bilād al-S̲h̲ām [see al-s̲h̲am ], has to take into account a broad range of changing and often localised rules and practices. This article will focus primarily on Syria’s main urban centres, Damascus [see dimas̲h̲ḳ ], Jerusalem [see al-ḳuds ] and Aleppo [see ḥalab ], and occasionally refer to smaller cities. In general, endowments in Syria have not solicited as much scholarly attention as those in Egypt, particularly before the Ottoman period. To a certain…

ʿAnaza (also ʿAniza, ʿUnayza; in English, Aneze, Anazeh, Anizeh) is the name of a large confederation of Arab tribal groups whose history is traceable continuously back to the ninth/fifteenth century. The anthropological interpretation of the concept of “tribe” has recently been intensely contested. The corresponding Arabic terms, especially qabīla and ʿashīra, are now widely understood to refer to social groups that claim descent from a common male ancestor and are connected with a specific territory at a particular time but that are not polit…