AbstractThis study examines the financial history of threewaqfs (those of Mevlânâ Celâleddîn-i Rûmî, Sadreddîn-i Konevî, and Selîm II) in Konya through their account records covering the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. These waqfs (charitable foundations) had large agricultural holdings, and their financial developments consequently reflect the local agricultural conditions in central Anatolia. This analysis of the waqf account books deals with the short-term financial difficulties resulting from harvest failures and increasing grain prices. The widespread Celâlî rebellions seem to have caused agricultural crisis and the financial decline of waqfs in the early seventeenth century.

This paper defines the category of imperial waqfs in the Ottoman waqf system. This category comprises the waqf complexes founded by the sultans, dynasty members and high-ranking state servants. A distinctive feature of imperial waqfs is the amount and variety of sources of income devoted to these institutions, so that consequently their huge budgets outweighed the budgets of thousands of ordinary waqfs. Their financial resources allowed them to provide diverse and costly charitable services and to emerge as economic and social institutions extending their influence over several towns and wide rural regions. Their economic, financial, and even charitable activities created a field of economic influence through the redistributive mechanisms of waqfs. This economic field and its influence are called the waqf economy in this paper. Some of the largest imperial waqfs were under the supervision of central offices and their institutional organization and administration was more sophisticated than the other waqfs. Organizational and administrative hierarchy and the delegation of authority over multiple levels of this hierarchy in the imperial waqfs, in the centrally-controlled waqfs in particular, gave rise to an agency problem. The imperial waqfs designated additional control and monitoring systems and an efficient incentive mechanism in order to solve the agency problem.

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The Celâlî rebel armies ravaged the central Anatolian countryside from the late 16th up to the mid-17th century. The Celâlî movements brought about demographic changes and had a long-lasting impact on agricultural economy in some regions. Anatolian waqf institutions being dependent on rural taxpayers and agricultural production for their budgets were seriously harmed by the Celâlî rebellions. This paper examines the Celâlî effect through the Waqf of Hatuniyye which had villages scattered across central Anatolian districts. The waqf fell into a deep financial crisis and its regular functioning was disrupted in the early 17th century. The waqf finance was unable to recover for decades after the crisis, which indicates that rural economy in waqf villages suffered from a perpetual production and population crisis.