Focusing on the eighteenth century, this chapter uses the surviving books from the manuscript library of the Buffalo Agency to reveal how Ibadi intellectual, religious, and commercial life in Ottoman Cairo intersected with that of their non-Ibadi contemporaries. Beyond funding the endowment for students at the Buffalo Agency, Ibadi merchants were also often the ones responsible for gifting or commissioning the books in its library. The books themselves included roughly equal numbers of Sunni and Ibadi titles. It traces the relationship of Ibadis with the famous (Sunni) al-Azhar Mosque and how the library of the Buffalo Agency reflects this relationship. In all cases, from the production of books to their endowment and use by students, Ibadis mirror the social and religious trends of their Sunni contemporaries in the Ottoman period.

This chapter discusses how Saudi women have actively negotiated gender boundaries and expanded their scope through the daily practice of charity work and the networks established among fellow social workers and volunteers. Founded in 1961–2 as a women-only initiative, the First Women’s Welfare Association in Jeddah counts among the oldest extant welfare associations in the kingdom enlisted with the Ministry of Social Affairs. The longue-durée perspective adopted in the chapter pays attention to the changing aspirations of different generations involved with the charity organization.

Although the First Women’s Welfare Association is often considered a "traditional charity" with an "Islamic aid" approach, its focus on single women, female-headed households, and the feminization of poverty transgresses traditional norms in multiple ways. The chapter discusses the charity’s use of donations, zakat and ṣadaqa, food banks, endowments, and shelters for single women and female-headed households. By situating practices of almsgiving within the wider legal and political framework of the zakat tax imposed by the Saudi state, as well as within the context of further legislation targeting money laundering and terrorist financing, the research highlights that religious ideals are subject to interpretation and object to various authoritative claims.

This chapter argues that euergetism in Hellenistic poleis was not just a form of benefaction securing kings and wealthy members of the polis symbolic capital, legitimacy and a superior place in the social hierarchy of poleis, but also a means of community building and social peace. The well-known habit of Hellenistic political communities to publish endowment decrees and the regulations concerning their legal execution on stone not only ensured that the assets dedicated to a particular purpose were not poorly managed, embezzled or transferred to another purpose. They were also public monuments of the democratic control over private wealth and its public display. Demonstrating that the people held ultimate power over the smooth running of public endowments, these decrees guaranteed and made visible the democratic commitment to their ‘eternal’ existence, and at the same time propagated the effectiveness of democratic institutions among the whole citizen body as well as vis-à-vis individual wealthy benefactors.