Islamic Fiqh > Endowments (waqf) and property > Istibdal (replacement) and the end of a waqf
May a ruined waqf asset be sold or exchanged? Istibdal, its conditions, the mosque's special case, and what happens to a waqf whose purpose disappears.
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Updated on 31 August 2026 at 3:55 AM
Exchanging a waqf for an equivalent is rejected by all reported jurists: Ibn Taymiyya himself, who admitted replacement for a benefit, states « it is not permitted to replace the waqf with its like, for that would break the designation without need » (al-Fatawa al-Kubra 4/514).
Changing the purpose: a house into an orchard or the reverse, a school into a mosque, a house into shops. Hanbalis and Ibn Taymiyya, with some Malikis, allow it for a benefit: the rightly guided caliphs changed the form of the Two Sacred Mosques, and Umar moved the mosque of Kufa. Three conditions set by as-Subki: a light change not touching the waqf's name, removing nothing of its substance, and for the waqf's benefit. Shafiites of the school: no change of form, save a founder's clause letting the manager act for benefit, al-Qaffal's fatwa admitting a change of type without genre, a tailor's shop into a bakery. Hanafis: no change without the founder's clause (al-Fatawa al-Hindiyya).
Movables unfit for their purpose are sold by agreement: the warhorse become unfit is sold and a like is bought, consensus reported by Abu Bakr al-Khallal. The building fallen to ruin: restoration comes first; Hanafis and Malikis impose it from the waqf's revenue before any distribution, and Ibn Abidin notes that the repair debt upon the waqf outranks beneficiaries. When ruin blocks all profit, sale and replacement by a like impose themselves, the price returning to the intended purpose, as the Maliki way holds for the collapsed house whose revenue first feeds the poor neighbours.
Ibn Taymiyya allows altering the founder's clause toward better, even as times change: « so that, if one endowed jurists and sufis and people needed jihad, it be directed to the soldiers » (al-Fatawa al-Kubra). al-Bahuti: a mosque's surplus of needs passes to another needy mosque. al-Qarafi: mosque revenues move when their purpose falls into disuse. The Me'yar al-Mu'arrab allows directing waqfs whose beneficiaries are no longer identifiable toward works of goodness, and Ibn al-Majishun deemed it lawful to enlarge a mosque with cemetery land grown too small.