From Learning Circles to Endowed Institutions: Zāwiyas of the Mosque of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀs in the Ayyubid and Mamlūk Cairo

Authors : Muhammet Enes MİDİLLİ

Pages : 293-319

Doi:10.26650/iuitd.2023.1178467

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Publication Date : 2023-03-31

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Zāwiya, as a polysemous term, refers to a Sufi institution, as well as to the concepts of khanqāh and ribāṭ insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(Sufi lodges);. On the other hand, however, it also denotes more modest architectural and organizational institutions built in suburban areas. Nevertheless, the term zāwiya has also been employed in the Syro-Egyptian region for describing the institutions of the central mosques of cities, in which scholars and their lessons in religious disciplines were supported regularly by endowments. This article deals with the eight zāwiyas of the Mosque of ʿAmr b. al-ʿĀs in Cairo, and particularly the most significant of them, the Zāwiya of Imām al-Shāfi‘ī. By analyzing the narratives of two major khiṭaṭ insert ignore into journalissuearticles values(topographical urban history); works compiled by Ibn Duqmāq and al-Maqrīzī and comparing them with other chronicles and biographical dictionaries of the period, this article argues that the mosquezāwiyas differed from the Sufi zāwiyas and that the zāwiyas, which formerly only denoted study circles held by scholars with their own initiatives in the mosques, turned into endowed, long-lasting, and prestigious institutions of learning with the proliferation of madrasas in Egypt during the 6th/12th century.
Keywords : Zâviye, Amr b Âs Camii, vakıf, medrese, Kahire