A Fiqhi and Legal Examination of Endowments (Waqf) in the Northern Forests of Iran

In Islamic jurisprudence, special provisions have been established for natural resources, especially forests and pastures. According to Shia jurists, natural resources, including Anfal, belong to the Imam. If it is pasture and forest that has been dedicated. This endowment is valid and valid when humans are involved in the creation of that forest and pasture. But the important issue under discussion is that the inhabitants of the forests of northern Iran and other forest parts of the country for many centuries and based on history and very old objects discovered in places in the northern provinces of Iran and other similar places, have a history of several thousand years of residence. They have been in the heart of the forests and considered themselves the owners of those areas. This sense of ownership in the forest made some believers dedicate forest lands under their control for various purposes. With the establishment of the Nationalization of Forests Law, the challenge of endowment of these lands was raised, therefore the law accepted the endowment lands before the adoption of this law, but did not accept the endowments after that due to the endowment of property by someone else. This research is of applied type and based on jurisprudence and legal sources, it examined the validity of forest land endowments after the approval of the nationalization law of forests by means of content analysis. The result of the research is: If a person rehabilitates a ruined forest, that part belongs to him and there is no problem in donating it.