Introduction

This issue of l’Atelier du CRH brings together the findings of two workshops held in Paris in 2017. The first –organized by Alessandro Buono and called “When the Household Fails: Abeyance and Vacant Successions from Institutional Guardianship to Local Belonging”– attracted scholars from the European worlds, from North Africa and the Near East. Since the very beginning, the meeting had been intended as the first step in a process of comparison not restricted to the Mediterranean region but emb...