Loan Charities and Cash Waqfs: Moral Credit in England and Ottoman Rumelia, c.1500–C.1800

Abstract

This article compares Ottoman ‘cash waqfs’ and English endowed‘loan charities’ as pre-modern institutions turning charity intoliquidity for households and small producers. Using close readingand corpus coding, it analyses 953 Rumelian cash-waqf deeds and82 loan-related entries from London charities compilation, codingeligibility, security, repayment terms, and yield design. Both insti-tutionalised moral credit, but with distinct governance and revenuelogics. Ottoman cash waqfs embedded lending in waqf law andtrustee succession to protect principal and fund recurrent payouts,while loan charities often combined interest-free lending with cor-porate trusteeship and investment in public funds.