Examining the Status of Endowed Property after the Death of Beneficiary in Sunni and Imami Jurisprudence

Endowment is of a particular status in Muslim societies and endowers play an effective role in promoting Islamic rituals and furthering the governmental objectives. Sometimes it happens that the endowers conclude the contract of the endowment in a way that the first receivers of the endowment are valid and existent while the next ones are invalid, or in a case where the endowment to the next receivers becomes illegitimate as in endowment to the infidels. If this is the case, there is a disagreement between Imami jurists and Sunni thinkers over the status of the endowed property after the death of the endower or the beneficiary. The jurists who provide response fall into these groups: Some of them consider the contract intrinsically invalid and illegitimate, while some call it valid. The ones who consider it invalid are of two views: 1. the endowed property on the account of the durability of the endowment contract should be devoted to the charity. 2. The endowed property should be returned to the heirs of the beneficiary so that the endowment would find continuation. Results of the study demonstrate that the contract of endowment is abolished by the termination of the ones the property is devoted to and the endowed property is given back to the endowers. The present study has been conducted through a descriptive-analytic method and by means of reliance on the library resources.