Development within time and the mosque’s endowment

[Picture source: © 2005 Mayer Wolfgang ]

The madrasa building, as it presents itself today, is the result of centuries long rebuilding and restoration process.

An inscription above the main entrance to the prayer hall testifies to a restoration in 1091/1680 and mentions the then-ruling sultan Muhammad IV.[1] This inscription does not provide any details of the nature of that renovation (‘jaddada’), but the mention of the sultan, as well as the absence of documents in the local court records, indicate that the madrasa’s endowments were placed under imperial control, like the endowments of the Sultans and other high-ranking dignitaries.  

The waqf of the Madrasa al-Halawiyya is among the biggest and at the same time most interesting of all awqaf in Aleppo. In his description of the madrasa, the historian Ghazzi details each building or piece of land in the waqf’s possession with its exact locations, a list that could be a book of its own.[2]

This very rich property, most of it endowed by Nur ad-Din Zengi himself, allowed the madrasa to hire the most famous Hanafi law professors available at that time. Waqf properties are found in almost all parts of the city, its surroundings and the region. Nevertheless, we can identify two areas in the city with a clear concentration of endowed property: the central market area and the northern suburb outside Bab an-Nasr. The central market area, mainly the suqs and the caravanserais, was one area of increased building activity during Nur ad-Din’s time. His aim was to rebuild the cities of the Bilad ash-Sham after centuries of decline, the result being the so-called urban renaissance of Syrian cities.[3]

The second ‘huge’ portion of waqf property is in the northwestern section of the northern suburb and the unbuilt area west of it. Ghazzi mentions that the land on which all houses, mosque and churches, etc. are constructed belongs to the madrasa. He says as well that all this property in his time (that is around 1900) belongs to other owners (milk al-ghayr), leaving only the land for the waqf. When observing waqf property over a long period, a gradual return of the structure into private property (milk) is almost inevitable, when destruction and ordinary wear and tear requires restoration work that the endowment is not able to finance. In this case, individuals, often the tenants of the building, might invest and acquire ownership rights of parts of the structure, or even of the whole building. With time, the endowment remains owner of the land alone and collects the ‘ground rent’ (hikr) that usually remains rather low.  

The Andalusian traveler Ibn Jubayr, who visited Aleppo in the 1180s, observed one interesting aspect of the property in the central market district. He mentions that the roofs of all the shops in the markets around the Umayyad Mosque were made of wood.[4] This might explain, why the shops had been lost to the waqf rather rapidly and only the land remained. A wooden structure would have been more vulnerable than a stone one.

Concerning the property in the northwestern suburb: Such a large piece of land in and adjacent to an important metropolis like Aleppo usually did not have only one owner. An important – but so far unanswered – question is how Nur ad-Din came to possess this land and how he was able to endow it. We may only speculate, but have at least some clues: Parts of the area were already built-up, like al-Hazzaza neighborhood that already existed in the 13th century.[5]  The churches in al-Judayda neighborhood can probably be traced back to monasteries from late antiquity (cf. al-Judayda). Was there a close connection between these monasteries and the old cathedral, and was the land part of the cathedral’s endowment?

By the 19^th century, the revenues of the madrasa’s endowment were no longer sufficient to keep it functioning, so the building gradually fell into ruin. Then, towards the end of the century, the land became profitable again. The endowment was able to rent it out, plot by plot, for the construction of the new extramural neighborhoods (parts of al-ʿAziziyya and Tilal). With this new income, the waqf’s administrators renovated the madrasa and established 11 new endowments between 1313/1895 and 1337 /1918 for its benefit. It again became one of the most prosperous religious institutions of Aleppo.[6]