Reflection and Reconsideration on the Custodianship of the Endowments of the Jāmeʿ Mosque of Zanjān

Purpose: Following the construction of the Jāmeʿ Mosque of Zanjān during the Qajar era, the management of its endowments was left to ʿAbdullāh Dārā, while its custodianship was given to Sayyid Muḥammad Mujtahid Ḥusayni. After their deaths, their descendants had a long controversy over the custodianship, with the Dārā family attempting to seize control and the Ḥusayni family attempting to keep it within their household. The paper, while elaborating on the controversies among the claimant groups and examining the accompanying conflicts and crises, poses the fundamental question of which family and individuals rightfully had custodianship of the profitable endowments of the Jāmeʿ Mosque of Zanjān.
Method and Research Design: The article's research method is historical research, conducted through a library-based approach and founded on documents in governmental, private, personal, and Zanjānī family archives, with a descriptive-analytical model being utilized to investigate the subject.
Findings and Conclusion: After careful examination of the documents of the families feigning custodianship of the Jāmeʿ Mosque, the waqf deed of the Dārā family—preserved by the offspring of one of the previous stewards named Dāmādī—is proved to be forged. In contrast, several waqf deeds of the Ḥusayni Zanjānī family, as custodians and Friday prayer leaders of the mosque, are proven valid. According to the results, in three instances, rulings of the Department for Waqf Research and the Committee for the Review of the Jāmeʿ Mosque's Endowment Documents under the Pahlavi regime (Reza Shah and Mohammad Reza Shah) and in the early post-revolutionary period confirmed the hereditary guardianship of the Ḥusayni Zanjānī family over the endowments of the mosque.