2019 Volume 54 Pages 41-53
This paper examines the waqf (religious endowment) deed of Tatarkhān (Cairo, Wizārat al-Awqāf, no. q913), the daughter of the Mamluk amir Ṭashtamur and explains the process by which the testamentary waqf, which was a waqf established based on a waṣiyya (will and testament) was established and enlarged during a forty-eight-year period. It describes the situation of a female founder/administrator of a waqf in late fourteenth-century Egypt.
In his last will and testament, made on his deathbed, Amir Ṭashtamur directed his will’s executors to buy assets with one-third of his legacy to create an endowed waqf for his tomb and descendants. The executors bought assets, and then one of the executors, al-Sayfī Urūj, endowed some of them as a waqf according to the will. After all of the executors had died, Tatarkhān, the testator’s daughter, became the administrator of the waqf and succeeded to the large number of waqf properties and milk properties to be dedicated to the waqf. She managed the assets as the administrator and she received great financial benefits from the waqf as its (probably sole) beneficiary. Finally, she founded a new tomb for herself and enlarged the waqf for it to respect her father’s will and simultaneously consider her personal benefit after death.
