Charity and Giving in Monotheistic Religions

Book excerpt: This book deals with various manifestations of charity or giving in the contexts of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim societies in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages. Monotheistic charity and giving display many common features. These underlying similarities reflect a commonly shared view about God and his relations to mankind and what humans owe to God and expect from him. Nevertheless, the fact that the emphasis is placed on similarities does not mean that the uniqueness of the concepts of charity and giving in the three monotheistic religions is denied. The contributors of the book deal with such heterogeneous topics like the language of social justice in early Christian homilies as well as charity and pious endowments in medieval Syria, Egypt and al-Andalus during the 11th-15th centuries. This wide range of approaches distinguish the book from other works on charity and giving in monotheistic religions.