Development over time and the mosque’s endowment

The particular visibility of the takiyya outside the Bab al-Faraj Gate, surrounded by gardens, seems to have made it an almost obligatory stop for foreign visitors to the city. The mention of the takiyya in a number of travel reports and descriptions of Aleppo is a valuable additional source for its history. Unfortunately, no detailed architectural description could be found so far, but what we find mentioned is usually the size of the takiyya and its relationship with other institutions in Aleppo. Interestingly, the Takiyyat ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr to the north of the city is often identified as a ‘second’ convent for dervishes. Chevalier d’Arvieux informs us that the Takiyya al-Mawlawiyya was home to about 25 dervishes at his time, in the second half of the 17^th century, while almost 40 were living in the Takiyyat ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr.[1] Alexander and Patrick Russell, about a century later, more or less confirm the primacy of the Takiyyat ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr. They report “eight or ten dervishes” who live comfortably there and a ‘smaller’ convent belonging to the “dancing Dervishes”.[2] The German traveler Ulrich Jasper Seetzen walked by Takiyya al-Mawlawiyya in 1803 and relates that seven dervishes were living there. It possessed two gardens, he wrote, though they seemed to be in poor condition.[3]

Takiyyat ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr is situated on a hill north of the city, in an even more ‘visible’ location than the Takiyya al-Mawlawiyya. (fig. 8) It was established by Shaykh Ahmad al-Qari around the tomb of the Sufi Abu Bakr al-Wafaʾi.[4] Like the Takiyya al-Mawlawiyya, this convent also benefitted from the particular attention of Ottoman bureaucrats who established endowments to support it and, during the 18^th century, the takiyya occasionally served as residence of the city’s Ottoman governor.[5] Local sources do not establish a direct link between these two institutions of Sufi Islam before the early 19^th century.

Though foreign observers grant greater importance to the Takiyyat ash-Shaykh Abu Bakr, after Shaykh Mustafa ibn Husayn al-Wafaʾi died without successor in 1213/1798-99, the position of shaykh at-takiyya remained vacant for more than ten years, and was finally assigned to Mustafa Dede, the brother of ʿAbd al-Ghani Dede, the shaykh of the Takiyya al-Mawlawiyya. He remained in that position until his death in 1284/1867-68.[6] Around the same time, another brother of the Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghani, Muhammad Salih, was appointed administrator (mutawalli) of three small neighbourhood mosques in the area around the takiyya.[7] This seems to indicate that the strategy of the Mawlawiyya changed at that time. No longer a ‘secluded convent’, its shaykhs, it seems, tried to build a network of religious institutions well entrenched in the city and its neighbourhoods.

The endowment of the takiyya was probably the richest of all Sufi institutions in Aleppo. Unfortunately, we do not possess much information, since it seems to have been administered without much recourse to the local law courts. We nevertheless possess a detailed account of the takiyya’s endowments from the year 1258/1842-43. Like other Sufi institutions, its properties were distributed all over the city particularly in the northern suburb and the intra muros. A number of these were situated in the province of Aleppo, particularly in the city of Antakya, where Shaykh ʿAbd al-Ghani was active and founded the local branch of the Mawlawiyya. The highest revenues achieved the takiyya’s endowment from the gardens next to it, which were to become the nucleus for the busy commercial Bab al-Faraj area.[8]

After the last shaykh had died in the 1950s, the Mawlawiyya ceased to perform its rituals and disappeared from Aleppo. The takiyya has since fulfilled the functions of a Friday mosque for the busy Bab al-Faraj area.