Islamic Fiqh > Endowments (waqf) and property > Family waqf (waqf dhurri)
Founding a waqf for one's descendants before the poor: validity, order of distribution, and the fate of the asset when the lineage ends.
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Updated on 06 October 2026 at 10:50 PM
Endowing property for one's children, one's children then their children, or one's descendants, is permitted per the generality of jurists. This family waqf (dhurri) follows the Companions' example, whose waqfs benefited their families first before a charitable purpose, per the wording reported from Umar: « Retain its principle and give its produce as charity ».
If the founder cites a single class, « I endow to my children », agreement covers the children living at the waqf's time, even a foetus, boys and girls equal when he favours none, since shared wording imposes equality. On a child born after the waqf: the majority (Hanafis, Malikis, Shafiites, Hanbalis in a preferred view) gives him a share, following the first ones; the Hanbali school excludes him. Shafiites in the school hold the foetus excluded until birth.
The wording « to my children » does not include grandchildren per Hanafis in the correct view, Shafiites in the soundest view, and the Qadi with his Hanbali companions: a son's child does not bear the name of child in the proper sense. Malikis, Shafiites in the opposite view and Hanbalis of the school include descendants through sons, not through daughters, per « Allah instructs you concerning your children: for the male, a share of 2 females » (Surah an-Nisa, 11); a third way includes all.
Excluded in general from « my children » and « my descendants »: Malikis in the retained view and Hanbalis exclude them, a daughter's child belonging to the father's lineage; Hanafis in the correct view, one Maliki line and Shafiites admit them under « my children and my children's children », the name then covering both lineages. All admit them with an explicit clause: « a lot for my daughters' children », or an indication such as « then, when the land is empty of whoever descends from me by father or mother, it goes to the poor ». The restriction « to my direct line » or « to those ascribed to me » excludes them without disagreement.
The family waqf remains a waqf: the family share is neither sold nor inherited, and the founder secures the future by naming a perpetual work at the chain's end, like Umar's waqf or the wording « then to the poor ».
Bada'i al-Sana'i by al-Kasani · Hanafi school
because the waqf is the withholding of the principal and the charity of the yield; and withholding does not imply ownership of the withheld, like the pledge; and one must begin by directing the yield toward the interests of the waqf: its construction, the repair of what has decayed of its building, and its other indispensable charges, whether the founder stipulated that or not; for the waqf is a perpetual charity in the path of Allah, the Most High, and it flows only by this way.