Graveyard Income for the Mosque

Question

Question: In the village of Shahpur there has always been, attached to the mosque, an area of two and a half full-measure bighas (a local unit of land area, reckoned in full and lesser varieties), of which the mosque stands on ten lesser biswas (a unit of land area, one-twentieth of a bigha), while the rest is cultivated, and its income goes to the imam of the mosque. And the dead of the whole village have always been buried in it too, and it is cultivated leaving the graves aside.

Answer

That land is a waqf either for the needs of the mosque or for burying the dead. In the first case the second practice is impermissible, and in the second case the first practice is impermissible. Whatever purpose the waqif made the waqf for, that same thing should be done with it, [ar]لأن نص الواقف كنص الشارع[/ar] “for the text of the waqif is like the text of the Lawgiver.”

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

Preview. The full text opens with JavaScript enabled.