International regulating of vakuf affairs in the Yugoslav lands

Abstract

The relations that came into existence regarding endowed property are regulated by the state-internal Laws of Moslem countries. In the Ottoman empire these consisted of the norms of Islamic Law (ahkamu-l-evkaf) formulated within the framework of Moslem legal Science and the norms of Ottoman State legislature.
In the period of the weakening and collapse of Ottoman power and the establishing of national States on Yugoslav territories, vakuf affairs equired international regulation. This work directs attention to the international Laws regulating vakuf affairs by studying the social and political circumstances in which this came about.

In the first period the vakuf was treated as Ottoman State property (Serbian State I & II uprising). International legal decisions (Convention of Acreman 1826, and Peace Contract of Edrene 1829), like internal legal decisions of the Ottoman Empire made on their basis do not mention vakufs, but regulate the position of Moslem populations, their private property and the property of the Ottoman Empire in way which determines the destiny of vakufs too.
Moslem population was not given a prospect of further residence on the territory of Serbia. Vakuf property in the regions, from which the Moslem population was removed, became the property of the Orthodox Church.
The San-Stefano Peace of 1878 treats vakufs in the same way as the property of the Ottoman State. The Berlin Contract of the same year, as a revison of the St. Stefano Peace, puts vakuf properties in the frame of Moslem property in the regions annexed to Serbia and Monte Negro. Vakufs were still connected to the Ottoman State and not to the local Moslem population. But these obligations were not fulfilled.
A treaty between Turkey and Serbia of 1914 denotes precisely the position of Moslems on the territories annexed to the Serbian state after the Balkan Wars 1912-1913.

After the I W. W. the peace treaty between Austria and Yugoslavia treats Moslems as a religious minority and obliges the Yugoslav State to give all necessary benefits and permits to vakufs.
Though the international legal obligations concerning vakuf were often not executed, their study is necessary for the history of this institution in the Yugoslav lands.