Bu çalışma IX. (XIV-XV.) yüzyıl Memlük ulemâsından fıkıh ve hadis âlimi İbn Kutluboğa’nın vakıfların mülk veya vakıf mal mukabilinde değiştirilmesi hakkında kaleme aldığı risâlenin tahkikli neşrinden oluşmaktadır. İlgili konu literatürde genellikle istibdal terimi ile ifade edilir. Genel kabule göre mescit dışındaki vakıf malın (tamamı/bir kısmı; yıkıntıları), müsevvikât-ı şer‘iyyenin (istibdal şartları) var olması ve yerine yeni vakıf satın alma şartıyla para karşılığında satılması ya hut vakfın mülk malla ya da vakıf malla değiştirilmesi işlemine vakıf hukukunda istibdal denilmektedir. Vakıfların değiştirilmesi meselesinde dikkat çeken nokta tarihsel süreçte kimi kadı, sultan vb. yöneticiler tarafından suiistimal edildiği gerçeğidir. Bu sebeple birçok fukaha istibdal kapısını kapatmıştır. İstibdâl-i vakıf risâlelerinden en değerlileri arasında sayılabilecek olan bu eserin yazılma sebebi, vakıf köy arazisinin yalancı şahitler devreye sokularak, sözde daha kıymetli başka bir vakıf arazi ile istibdal edildiğine dair hâkim tarafından hüküm verilmesine rağmen, akdin feshedilmesinin mümkün olup olmadığı hakkında ilim ehlinin kendisine sorduğu suali cevaplama arzusudur. Bu durumda söz konusu hükmün iptal edilmesi gerektiğini ifade eden yazar, ilgili mesele hakkında kendisini destekleyen muasır altı ulemânın görüşlerini de risâlesinde aktarmaktadır. İstibdal meselesiyle ilgili tarihsel süreçte yoğun tartışmalar cereyan etmiştir. Bu risâlede de müellifle aynı zamanda yaşamış bazı âlimler, kendisi ve destekçilerine karşı yirmi bir civarında itiraz ortaya atmışlardır. İbn Kutluboğa, bunların bazısını dikkate almadığı halde bir kısmına eserinde cevap vermektedir. Hanefî fürû-i fıkıh ve fetâvâ eserlerinden oldukça nakiller bulunan istibdal risâlesinde müellif, diğer risâlelerinden farklı olarak birçok hadis rivayet etmekte ve kendisini destekleyenlerin ve karşı çıkanların sözlerini ilgili çalışmasında nakletmektedir.

It is important to protect foundations (awqāf) for the advantage of Muslims and even of humanity. According to scholars, the conditions of foundations should remain unaltered unless there exists an urgent need for change and the community should guard against abuses such as corruption or thievery. Discussions concerning changes within certain conditions stipulated by the endower have continued from the earliest period until the present day. During his governorship in Kufa, Sa‘d b. Abū Waqqās (Sa‘d b. Mālik) (d. 55/675) built the Kufa Mosque in 639. Across the altar of this mosque, he also built the treasury house. Assets were stolen through vents on the wall of treasury. When Sa‘d informed the caliph Umar I (d. 23/644) by a letter, the caliph ordered to transfer the mosque and the treasury to another place and rebuild the treasury house near the altar. According to the narrative of Šabarī, the Muslim community attending the mosque would guard the treasury against thieves. Although the narrator of this report does not emphasize it as the first example of a change to the conditions of a foundation in Islamic history, we can consider this to be the first occurrence of this sort as we do not have any previous example reported to us.The most prevalent view of the Muslim jurists is that “the endowed property cannot be sold because it belongs to God.” Changes (istibdāl) are possible only when the renewal of the property is necessary, which is a principle to ensure the continuity of the foundation until end times. According to widespread approach, istibdāl (change to foundations) is to sell (the whole/a part or the ruined parts of) endowed properties, except for mosques, or to exchange it/them with another endowed property or a private property provided that a stipulated condition for exchange are defined by the endower and new properties are to be purchased in its/their place. It may adopt various forms, in respect to time, space and schools of law, such as tabdīl, munāqala, mubādala. Muslim jurists hardly view ungrounded ex/changes permissible. They seek an indispensable condition for change such as ruin, fire, destruction etc. During the Ottoman period, the first resort for the continuation of the endowed property was not istibdāl but repairing the property with the foundation’s own money, or through financial solutions such as loans, renting, establishing cash foundations, long-term renting and raqaba (bare ownership) etc. This subject, which has been discussed since the Hanafi jurist Muģammad al-Shaybānī, found wide space in jurisprudential works, fatwā (legal responsa) collections and treatises. As far as I can find, twenty-four treatises were composed on the issue of changes to foundations. It is worth noting that this number is surprisingly high probably because of the importance of the subject. Among all the treatises I have reached, only two do not have critical editions. This article aims to fill a gap by providing a critical edition of an important work related to changes of foundations penned by Ibn Qušlūbughā, a ninth/ fourteenth-fifteenth century scholar of law and hadith in the Mamluk lands. Ibn Qušlūbughā wrote this treatise in response to a question posed to him by some scholars. The question was about whether canceling a contract was legally permitted when a judge has determined the soundness of an exchange in an endowed village land with another allegedly more valuable endowed land. In his answer, Ibn Qušlūbughā stated that the contract should be cancelled and that the old endowed land should continue as though no exchange contract was signed. Beginning his discussion with this answer, he invoked the views of six contemporary jurists on the subject. However, some jurists living at the same time expressed around twenty-one objections to him and his supporters. Ibn Qušlūbughā answered some of them and disregarded the others. The author, who relied in this treatise extensively on the Hanafī jurisprudential works and collections of legal opinions, transmitted many prophetic traditions, which makes this work different from other works on istibdāl. Besides, this treatise has a special position among other treatises on istibdāl as it includes many supporting views from the contemporary jurists on the annulment of the contract of exchange in cases of an abuse, as well as many contrasting views side by side. Therefore, we examine the works whose critical edition will be presented here in respect to its purpose of composition, its views on changes in the conditions of foundations and objections given to its adopted position. Ibn Qušlūbughā was a scholar from the Mamluk period. Examining the treatise, we observe that during the late Mamluk period, some trustees of the foundations had a tendency to act inattentively to the details of the stipulated principles; some inspectors determined the values of endowed properties superficially in cases of exchange, thereby they all assign the foundation’s advantage to a secondary position. In these cases, the author and other jurists sharing the same view recommended to those who were beneficiaries of the foundations to appeal to higher authorities in instances of abuse. The treatise is given in the author’s volume of collected works, titled Fawā’id. I have learned of fourteen manuscripts to this volume, and four of them are preserved in Süleymaniye Library. Among these, I could not acquire the manuscripts in Kuwait and Ireland. However, I learned of the existence of these manuscripts from Fihris makhšūšāt; their times of recension are not given, thereby I did not include them in my comparative critical edition. The earliest one among the remaining twelve manuscripts is the Servili manuscript. I compared this with the ones in Bağdatlı Vehbî and Hekimoğlu. In addition, these three copies have various features that make them especially valuable. Since the original copy or a copy produced directly from the original does not exist, and as the times of recension for these three copies were relatively close to each other, I had to (re)construct the text by taking all of the copies into consideration. However, the Hekimoğlu copy has a more legible script with more correct phrases. I consulted other copies when needed. The treatise has another critical edition. However, as I explain in the article, there exist good reasons for a reproduction of its critical edition. The most important reason is the fact that half of the treatise is not presented in the previous edition. Besides, I have discovered that the earliest copy of the treatise was copied by probably the author’s close student Sakhāwī who also named the title of the treatise.