Charity and philanthropy in Middle East history

Abstract

Until the late 20th century, few studies focused on the history of charity and philanthropy in the Middle East from the medieval to modern periods. The work that explored this subject largely concentrated on the ideals of charitable practices, such as the faith-based tenets of social welfare as an Islamic communal practice and the religiously mandated form of almsgiving (zakat). But during the late 1990s, a new generation of scholars challenged the assumption of charity across the region as only a pious act and sought to address the dearth of literature on the subject. They shifted critical focus onto the history of philanthropy to consider and account for the social, economic, and political structures that shaped a wide range of charitable practices, activities, institutions, benefactors, and recipients. They also interrogated how communities determined the parameters of need, developed notions of the “deserving poor,” and mediated the relationship between the ideals and practices of beneficence. Overlapping fields such as social history and women's studies as well as analytics of gender, class, and national identity informed and advanced historical studies of charity and philanthropy across the Middle East. The subfield continues to innovate with new work across academic disciplines and new publishing venues for further studies of charity in the region across time periods.