Foundations

International Historical Background

Charitable foundations can be traced back to the ancient Mediterranean world. Across many cultures, substantial assets have been set aside for specific philanthropic, charitable, and religious purposes. In ancient Greece and Rome, rulers and wealthy donors (encouraged by Aristotle, Horace, and Seneca) created endowments to support schools, [Page 587]temples, libraries, civic buildings, dowries for poor girls, and public festivals. Enjoined to do good deeds with the gifts of God, Christians endowed convents, monasteries, schools, hostels, orphanages, and charities for the sick and the poor, often, ideally, without seeking publicity. Like their ancient counterparts, the magnates of medieval Europe demonstrated their “liberality” and virtue—their right to public respect and leadership—through generous gifts of buildings and other “public and common things.” By the 700s, Muslims were preserving resources for religious, social welfare, and educational activity through traditional vakif—endowments of land and buildings that produced income for mosques, schools, and charities. In central, southern, and eastern Asia, temples, monasteries, charitable lineage estates, benevolent associations, and other communities received lands and other endowments, and sometimes used their income to support schools and provide aid to people from outside their core groups.

Foundations, in the sense of endowed charities devoted to religious worship, to the education and support of clergy, and to the care of orphans, the poor, and the sick, played important roles in medieval Europe and the Ottoman Empire; in the latter, it eventually became possible to use cash to create a vakif. As concentrations of potentially independent wealth and influence, foundations attracted the critical attention of ambitious rulers and of religious leaders intent on unity—but often retained their integrity. As emblems of the ancient regime, foundations became targets of the French Revolution.

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