Conflicts were nothing new in the history of awqaf. Two kinds of disagreement seemed perennial. The first of those was purely personal, the result of inequalities, real and imagined, in the distribution of endowments' proceeds. The second sort of conflict involved the relationship of endowments to the institutions of religion and the state. While the sources of discord remained remarkably consistent, the context in which it occurred changed considerably. Because awqaf in their many forms, proved effective in preserving the property and supplying the spiritual needs of Muslims, their importance tended to increase at those moments which marked a transition from one social or political system to another.

Kings, warrior–nobles, merchants and religious scholars in Egypt, Iran and Anatolia founded endowments to settle their property and support mosques, schools and shrines. While endowments for mosques and shrines were common in India before the arrival of the British, their use as a method of settling estates appeared to follow the imposition of British rule. Before that time, the character of property relations made them unnecessary. Most Muslims were too poor to establish awqaf. Where Muslim cultivators enjoyed some wealth, for example in Panjab, they usually followed customs of inheritance which prevented the division of land. Merchants, local chiefs and the states' warrior–nobles possessed sufficient wealth to create endowments, but it was generated by trade or control of the crops and cash which land produced, not by land ownership. A division of estates based mostly on moveables would have been easier than the carving up of land.