I also heard the district waqf director caution villagers against giving alms to the local preacher for transmission to the local waqf office.
Only legal taxes should be imposed including the obligation of the alms tax (zakat), and encouraging people to give voluntarily.
A significant proportion of them were young, male beggars who were feared capable of working sorcery as a rite of revenge against householders who rejected their pleas for alms.
From the crisis of the late 1580s until the 1620s alms took up 30 to 70 per cent of direct expenditure on the poor in many years.
Alms were collected at church services, and the bread purchased thereby was certainly disbursed at the church door, a very public display of charity, hierarchy and dependence.
Widows are sometimes recorded in receipt of company alms (pp. 91, 351) and they played an important part in transferring their husbands' bequests to the craft (pp. 351, 415).
Here we have fasting, alms-giving, prayers, and a special three-day programme of litanies, with priests walking barefoot to church - all in support of a military emergency.
The ceremony thus became a component of a solemn feast in the church, including orchestral music, fireworks and alms to the poor, all paid for by the girl's family.
