Recognition of Distinction Between Public & Private Waqf/Endowment

The classification of waqf (endowment) as public and private is one of the most important typologies in this field. The heterogeneity in the nature of these two types has become the basis for issuing sets of different rules regarding them. Nonetheless, in the field of law, the identification of and the distinction between the natures of the public and private types have been addressed only briefly. In this regard, with the support of the scholarly literature on jurisprudence, a precise criterion can be developed and established for the recognition of distinction between these two categories, which can serve as a basis for the difference among the rules. If the benefactor considers definite individuals as beneficiaries and they are ascertained in the composition of the endowment, then the endowment is private. However, if the benefactor has not regarded definite and ascertained individuals as beneficiaries, and, instead, the fulfilment of material or spiritual needs of a body of indefinite and fluctuating body of persons has led the benefactor to give his/her consent to the composition of the endowment, then the endowment is of the public type. Hence, private endowment is the vesting of money or property for the use or profit of definite and ascertained individuals, while public endowment is about vesting in an uncertain and fluctuating body of persons.