History of Sufism in Aleppo
[Picture source: © 1987 Jean-Claude David] [Picture source: © 1987 Jean-Claude David] Introduction
Walking on a Friday afternoon through the residential parts of al-Jallum neighbourhood, away from the traffic noise, one might overhear, when approaching the Zawiya al-Hilaliyya, the rhythmic chanting of the dhikr that fills the empty alleys surrounding the zawiya.
Situated in the center of al-Jallum neighbourhood, the Zawiya al-Hilaliyya was and still is one of Aleppo’s most important and interesting institutions of Sufi Islam. In addition to the mosques, these institutions – called zawiya or takiyya in Aleppo – provided the people with special religious services.
The mystical variant of Islamic piety (Sufism, Arabic tasawwuf) probably existed since the time of the Prophet. Early forms of Islamic mysticism saw itinerant shaykhs and others assemble a number of disciples in a certain place. In Aleppo during the 11th century, a more organized form of Sufism spread, as in the other cities of Syria, around an institution called khanqah. Probably founded in Khorasan and Transoxiana in the 10th century, it spread westwards with the expansion of the Seljuk Empire during the 11th century and consolidated as an institution, where a shaykh could gather his disciples. In some cases, local rulers founded khanqahs as a waqf (religious endowment), to maintain them over the long term. Nur ad-Din Zengi and the Ayyubids continued this policy in Syria [1]. One example in Aleppo would be the khanqah of Shihab al-Din Hafs ʿUmar al-Suhrawardi (died 632/1234), who lived there [2], and the Amir Jamal at-Tinbi (died 639/1241-42) who founded a khanqah in his house in the ʿAqaba neighbourhood and was buried there [3]. Thus, the establishment of these institutions of Sufi Islam in the urban centers of Syria and Iraq was one aspect of institutional backing of Sunni Islam that was supported by the rulers, which is generally called the ‘Sunni Revival’ [4]. During that time, the Sufi orders (tariqa, pl. turuq) developed and spread throughout the Muslim world, giving Sufism a stronger institutional basis.
Later, probably in Mamluk times, the appellation ‘khanqah’ was replaced by ‘zawiya’, which originally meant ‘corner of a building’. It was used to name the cells of Christian monks, as well as small mosques or prayer rooms. In addition to the zawiya, a second type of Sufi institution spread in Aleppo: the takiyya. On a relatively larger scale, with a larger waqf than a zawiya, the takiyya is usually related to a Sufi establishment with direct links to the Ottoman authorities, or a Turkish order [5]. Most of the institutions called takiyya in Aleppo had enough space to accommodate a community of Sufis who lived there permanently. The three most prominent examples from Ottoman Aleppo would be the Takiyya al-Mawlawiyya, the Takiyyat al-Shaykh Abu Bakr and the Takiyyat Baba Bayram.
In Ottoman times, whose documentation is rather rich, we find an important number of Sufi institutions distributed through the entire urban fabric of Aleppo, sometimes in proximity to mosques, sometimes as independent buildings, thus forming a parallel religious structure.
Footnotes
[1] Chabbi, “Khānqāh”.
[2] Trimingham, Sufi Orders, 34f.
[3] Tabbakh, Iʿlam, 4:377.
[4] Elisséeff, Nûr ad-Dîn, 3:763.
[5] Clayer, “Tekke”.
