This paper seeks to link conservation of historicbuildings with a tradition of Islamic waqf.Its aim is to inspireuseful conservation lessons from this tradition for possible usein modern day practice. The paper investigates traditionalwaqf practice in the World Heritage Stone Town of Zanzibar todiscover how it managed to preserve substantial stock of itshistoric buildings throughout the times. The results of thispaper show that althoughwaqfwasoriginally intended forsocio-economic welfare of poor and disadvantaged, it isinherently coded with simple but effective heritageconservation philosophies.The philosophies pre-date theworld conservation movements and can be adopted to enrichthe present concepts.