Historical overview
By Stefan Knost
[Picture source: © 2008 Lamia Jasser] [Picture source: © 2008 Lamia Jasser] 
Figure 1: Jamiʿ al-Mihmandar, general view [Picture source: © 2009 Lamia Jasser] The Jamiʿ al-Mihmandar[1] (Fig. 1) is situated in Suwayqat ʿAli quarter, which traditionally constituted the main axis connecting the central market area (the economic center of Aleppo) with the northern suburbs outside the Bab an-Nasr. Important infrastructural projects, mainly the construction of a new water network, took place in that area outside the city gate at the end of the 15th century, and laid the base for its development in subsequent centuries. In Ottoman times, it became the second economic center for Aleppo, particularly for the textile industry, dotted with a number of khans and qaysariyyas.
In Mamluk times notables, amirs and other important figures chose to make their residences in Suwayqat ʿAli. Consequently it was dotted with a number of spacious mansions, mainly in the area right and left of the main street. This continued in Ottoman times. Musa Agha al-Amiri, for example, probably the most affluent merchant in 18th-century Aleppo, built his residence there. Due to the growing economic importance of the suwayqa, some of the Mamluk residences there were transformed into commercial structures during Ottoman times.[2]
Economic and social development may have had a religious component. So the suwayqa witnessed the foundation of religious institutions as well, from which we will single out the foundation of a Friday mosque. This interesting development requires some preliminary explanation. The classical doctrine in Islamic Law – that the Shafi’i school of law never gave up – demands that the whole congregation of a city (that is, all its male adult Muslims) should assemble for the Friday prayer in the same mosque. This rule was observed – more or less strictly – until the end of Ayyubid times in the middle of the 13th century. The Mamluks preferred the Hanafi School of law and, after taking power in Egypt and Syria, developed a more pragmatic attitude. Taking the growth of the cities and the Muslim communities within them into consideration facilitated the construction of Friday mosques in different part of a city. Nevertheless, even in Mamluk times, the construction of a new Friday mosque usually remained the privilege of a sultan or a high-ranking amir. As already mentioned, Suwayqat ʿAli attracted a number of Mamluk notables who constructed their residences there, and it saw the foundation of one new Friday mosque: the Jamiʿ al-Mihmandar. It seems that this mosque was constructed in two stages: In 702/1303, the Mamluk Amir al-Husayn Husam ad-Din ibn Balban, known as ‘Ibn al-Mihmandar,’ founded the mosque and endowed it with a large waqf, including land in villages, mills, a hammam outside Bab al-Jinan and the mansion (bayt) opposite the mosque.[3] In a second stage, about fifty years later, as Meinecke argues based on stylistic evidence, the minaret with the portal were added to the mosque.[4]
Two other substantial endowments from 852/1448-49 and 868/1463-64 incorporated land in a number of villages in the Aleppo area into the waqf and stipulated Qurʾanic recitations and a teacher of hadith.[5]
It seems that the descendants of the founder Ibn Balban retained connections to the mosque and occupied positions there, like Yusuf b. Ahmad (died 934/1527), who served as muezzin, like his father before him and his son after him.[6]
