Selling What the Dervishes Gave to the Mosque, Etc.

Question

In the small town of Shamli, behind the Garhi-wali mosque, there was a waste plot of land called the “dervish lodge”, and mendicant dervishes held and managed it. The dervishes gave this land to a man to cultivate. That man, having spent something, had his cultivation of it entered (in the land records). When the dervishes learned that the land had passed out of their possession, they gave this land to the adjoining mosque, and as a precaution a sale deed was written for about four hundred, but nothing was taken.

Answer

(1) If it had not been established that the land held by the dervishes was waqf or the property of someone else, and they, by “selling” it, gave it to the mosque and did not take the price, then that land has become the property of the mosque. If the mutawallis, having bought it, did not formally make it waqf, then it has not become waqf. (1)

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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