Development through time and the mosque’s endowment
[Picture source: © Stefan Knost] [Picture source: © Stefan Knost] The Jamiʿ al-Mashatiyya does not appear often in administrative sources, like the Law Court Records. This indicates that its administration was done mostly without the help of the law court, typical of a neighborhood mosque with a ‘parish’ like community.
The mosque’s endowment possessed in 992/1583-84 only six shops (dakakin) in Suq al-Mashatiyya, the neighborhood market near the mosque. The rather low revenues generated from this real estate (864 akçe, compared to 1988 akçe for the Jamiʿ Sharaf)[1] suggests a modest mosque with four employees -- an imam, who served as mutawalli at the same time, a muezzin, a servant (khadim) and a preacher (khatib) -- indicating that it was already a Friday mosque (jamiʿ) at that time.[2] The real estate holdings of the endowment increased by the middle of the 18th century. We find now 14 properties, still mostly shops in the neighborhood suq next to the mosque, which generated revenues of about 80 piasters per year (compared to 280 piasters for the Jamiʿ Sharaf during the same period).[3] The number of properties and their revenues increase constantly to reach about 1206 piasters in 1256/1840-41 (2478 for the Jamiʿ Sharaf in 1258/1842-43). We observe a greater increase in revenues than among mosques in other parts of Aleppo. Between the mid-18th century and the mid-19th century, the revenues of the endowment of the Jamiʿ al-Mashatiyya show a fifteen-fold increase, compared to a five-fold rise for the Sharaf Mosque.[4] Since the revenues were generated mostly by rental of real estate – particularly the shops in the neighborhood market – this indicates a disproportionately high increase in real-estate prices in this part of Aleppo, compared to other parts of the city.
These observations can be put in the context of the general urban and economic development of Aleppo in the 18th and 19th centuries. The northern suburb ‘outside Bab an-Nasr’ developed into Aleppo’s second economic center after the Ottoman conquest, particularly for the textile industry. The economic activities of the northeastern suburb, Banqusa, were traditionally linked to the long-distance caravan trade. The khans in this area provided services for this trade, but we find the grain market there as well, since it connected Aleppo to its eastern and northeastern grain-producing hinterland. During the second half of the 19th century, the production of grain in northern Syria increased, as did the involvement of Aleppo merchants in the grain trade.[5] The disproportional increase of real estate rents in the Banqusa area as early as the mid-18th century (maybe earlier, but we lack information on that so far), attests to a dynamic economic development before that structural change in the second half of the 19th century.
There is further interesting information about everyday life in, and the administration of, the mosque. A part of the income, the ground rent of a number of houses, was not calculated in money, but in olive oil (ahkar zayt). Olive oil was used for the lamps that illuminated the mosque, particularly during the night prayers (tarawih) in the month of Ramadan. Unlike cash rents, rent in kind, like the olive oil, was inflation-proof. Another particularity probably attests to the existence of a permanent parish-like mosque community that contributed to mosque finances. In 1217/1802-03 we find among the revenue of the endowment 3 piasters as ‘khayrat al-jumʿa’, an offering donated by the community on the occasion of the Friday prayer.[6]
