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Serving Up Charity: The Ottoman Public Kitchen
- Journal of Interdisciplinary History
- The MIT Press
- Volume 35, Number 3, Winter 2005
- pp. 481-500
- Article
- Additional Information
Beneficent giving is one of Islam's basic obligations and principles. Food distributions in the Ottoman public kitchens (imarets) offer one material example of how Muslims put these principles into practice. The imaret distributions also demonstrate the extent to which particular historical perceptions of need and deservingness informed more universally familiar decisions about charitable giving.