, the Stoic Roman
emperor who created the first
endowed chair professorships The earliest
endowed chairs were established by the
Roman emperor and
Stoic philosopher
Marcus Aurelius in
Athens in AD 176. Aurelius created one endowed chair for each of the major schools of
philosophy:
Platonism,
Aristotelianism,
Stoicism, and
Epicureanism. Later, similar endowments were set up in some other major cities of the Roman Empire.
Waqf (; ), also known as 'hubous' (حُبوس) or
mortmain property, is a similar concept from
Islamic law, which typically involves donating a building, plot of land or other assets for
Muslim religious or charitable purposes with no intention of reclaiming the assets. The donated assets may be held by a
charitable trust. The two oldest known
waqfiya (deed) documents are from the 9th century, while a third one dates from the early 10th century, all three within the Abbasid Period. The oldest dated
waqfiya goes back to 876 CE, concerns a multi-volume Qur'an edition and is held by the
Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in
Istanbul. A possibly older
waqfiya is a papyrus held by the
Louvre Museum in
Paris, with no written date but considered to be from the mid-9th century. The earliest known waqf in Egypt, founded by financial official Abū Bakr Muḥammad bin Ali al-Madhara'i in 919 (during the
Abbasid period), is a pond called Birkat Ḥabash together with its surrounding orchards, whose revenue was to be used to operate a hydraulic complex and feed the poor. In India, wakfs are relatively common among Muslim communities and are regulated by the
Central Wakf Council and governed by Wakf Act 1995 (which superseded Wakf Act 1954). In medieval Europe, endowments were used to establish
chantries, where masses and prayers were said for the dead. Royal patrons endowed large foundations such as
Reading Abbey, founded by
Henry I after the death of his son in the
White Ship disaster. Some of the earliest endowed professorships in Europe were established by King
Alfonso VIII of Castile in 1212 as part of an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to establish the
University of Palencia. The endowed madrasas of the medieval Muslim world are thought to have inspired the establishment of endowed colleges at universities in Europe from the 13th century, with strong similarities particularly noted between
waqfiya and the foundation statutes of
Merton College, Oxford, the prototype of the English eleemosynary trust. These developed into eleemosynary corporations – charities established for the perpetual distribution of the alms or bounty of their founder, such as hospitals or colleges. In England, these had a
visitor – an overseer of the charity appointed by the founder to ensure their wishes were followed – as a necessity incident of their foundation. The earliest endowed professorship in Britain was the
Regius Professor of Medicine established in 1497 in Aberdeen by King
James IV of Scotland. This was followed in England by the endowment of
Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Oxford and
Lady Margaret's Professor of Divinity at Cambridge in 1502 by
Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and grandmother to the future king
Henry VIII. Nearly 50 years later, Henry VIII established
regius professorships at Oxford and Cambridge in divinity (theology), civil law, Hebrew, Greek, and physic (medicine). Other individuals also endowed professorships, such as the
Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, endowed in 1663 by
Henry Lucas. ==Modern college and university endowments==