Microcredit in the Ottoman Empire: A Review of Cash Waqfs in Transition to Modern Banking

Gürer Karagedikli and Ali Coşkun Tunçer
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Gürer Karagedikli: Middle East Technical University
Ali Coşkun Tunçer: University College London

A chapter in Financing in Europe, 2018, pp 239-268 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The chapter by Gürer Karagedikli and Ali Coşkun Tunçer explores the credit activities of cash waqfs (religious foundations) in the Ottoman Empire in the nineteenth century by relying on original waqf registers. It conceptualises cash waqfs as microcredit organisations and questions the established view that they went into decline in the nineteenth century at the face of competition with the formal credit institutions. The chapter shows that the cash waqfs and the bank branches proliferated in number across the Ottoman Empire during this period, and they showed a similar geographical distribution. This finding implies that cash waqfs complemented the activities of the modern banks by mitigating the social costs of nineteenth-century globalisation.

Keywords: Cash Waqf; Modern Banking; Ottoman Empire; Waqf System; Ottoman Public Debt Administration (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:psitcp:978-3-319-58493-5_10

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-58493-5_10

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