Development within time and the mosque’s endowment
[Picture source: © 2009 Stefan Knost] [Picture source: © 2009 Stefan Knost] For the first two centuries of its existence, we lack any information about the endowment. From the mid-18th to the mid-19th century on the other hand, we possess a number of accounts recording the endowment’s revenues and expenses, as well as some rent contracts concerning the hammam.
These documents reveal that a communal bath was a sophisticated enterprise, with different levels of ‘owners’ and entrepreneurs possessing shares in it. The building is part of the waqf, as we have seen, but the endowment usually did not run the establishment itself, but rented it with its immobile assets (building, oven, etc.) to a tenant. In a different type of contract, called gedik, furnishing and equipment (stools, cups, towels, futas, etc.) could also be rented out to a subtenant.[1]
Access to fresh water is essential for a hammam, but it is a privilege. The ‘Aleppo canals’ (qanat Halab) provided the city with fresh water. Mosques, hammams, and public fountains had access to this system, as did some private residences. Old legal rights regulated access to this important resource. The Hammam Raqban is situated in the northeastern part of Aleppo, close to the place where the water supply network entered the city (near the Bab al-Hadid, also known as Bab al-Qanat).[2] A document from 1113/1720-21 lists those institutions and private houses having access to fresh water. The Hammam Raqban was supplied during daytime only (probably from the morning to the afternoon prayer). This was rather generous, as hammams situated further west in the city had access for only for a few hours a day. In periods when it lacked fresh water, the hammam possessed a cistern (sahrij).
This privileged access to fresh water was not free. A ‘qanawi’ had to be paid for maintenance work on the water pipes and managing the access to the water. As documents registered into the court records attest, the maintenance costs of the whole water supply system was regularly redistributed among the beneficiaries. Unlike other consumers, the hammams also paid a particular fee, called ‘mal nahr wa sajur’ (river and sajur [river] money). This most probably refers to the two sources of the ‘Qanat Halab’ in addition to the source of Haylan: the Quwayq and Sajur rivers.[3]
Information from the waqf account documents inform us that hammams regularly needed substantial renovations. The usual means of raising the necessary money were long-term rent contracts (ijara tawila) – often extending 6 or 9 years – with down payments at the beginning of the contract. Nevertheless, we observe that during the period between roughly 1740 and 1840, a substantial and continuously augmenting share of the revenues of the bath (in some years even more than 100%) had to be spent on its upkeep.[4]
A hammam was thus an important component of the urban landscape, but a vulnerable economic enterprise susceptible to suffer and even stop operations in case of disturbances. Closed hammams are thus not a modern phenomenon only, but could be observed in former times as well.
