The Zawiya and the City

When looking into the zawiya’s relationship to the urban space, we are able to discern different aspects and levels of connection. It certainly was an important religious center for the neighbourhood al-Jallum, but our documents suggest that its importance went far beyond that. Here, we may stress two aspects. The first concerns its followers. Unlike neighbourhood mosques, whose community usually lived close to the mosque, the community of the Zawiya al-Hilaliyya seemed to be dispersed over the whole city. This is indicated by the distribution of its waqf property, which is spread throughout the urban fabric. Some of the founders belong to notable families, like the Taha Zadeh (founders of the Madrasa al-Ahmadiyya) or the Hamawi Zadeh (linked to the Jamiʿ al-Hajj Hasan al-Hamawi in the Baiyada neighbourhood) families. These benefactors did not simply endow property for the zawiya, but sometimes included detailed stipulations within the waqfiyyat (endowment charters) on how the revenues should be spent. We find general provisions, like allocations of money for the celebration of the khalwa (waqf of Taha ibn ʿUmar Taha Zadeh), but also very precise specifications, like that of Yusuf ʿArabi Katibi, who determines that ShaykhIbrahim al-Hilali should teach a lesson in fiqh (law) five days a week in the Umayyad Mosque (cf. article Umayyad Mosque) [12].

The second aspect of the relationship to consider concerns the zawiya’s role in the network of Sufi institutions in the city. We have already mentioned that one of the reasons for the centuries-long success of the Zawiya al-Hilaliyya was its link to a family, thus patrilineal and spiritual genealogy (silsila) are combined. In Sufism, the relationship between shaykh and disciple is very important. The different shaykhs of the Hilaliyya attracted a number of followers from within and outside Aleppo. Some of them left, after their education in the zawiya was finished, with an ijaza (diploma) authorizing them to teach the principles of the order and to celebrate the dhikr and the khalwaaccording to the tradition of the Zawiya al-Hilaliyya. Shaykh Saʿd al-Yamani for example, of Yemeni origin, arrived in Aleppo in 1174/1760-61 and became a disciple of Shaykh Muhammad Hilal al-Hilali. After receiving the ijaza, he started to celebrate dhikr in the Jamiʿ al-Mushatiyya in al-Banqusa, a northeastern suburb. His tomb is in the qibliyya (prayer hall) of the mosque. His successor Shaykh ʿAbd al-Qadir an-Nashid then constructed a small zawiya in the courtyard of the mosque [13]. A disciple of Shaykh Ibrahim al-Hilali, Shaykh Saʿd al-Badanjaki, established a zawiya in the medieval Madrasa at-Turuntaʾiyya in the Muhammad Bek neighbourhood extra muros in the southeast, where he died and was buried in 1250/1834-35 [14]. The Zawiya al-Badanjakiyya was the last institution in Aleppo, to our knowledge, where the khalwa was still celebrated in the 1990s [15].

The institutions of Sufi Islam form a very important and visible part of the religious landscape of Aleppo to the present day, with their rituals, particularly the dhikr, complementing the mosques with their ritual prayers. Unlikemany small neighbourhood mosques, their followers were often – at least from what sources tell us – not from one single neighbourhood, but from all over the city, underlining the translocal character of Sufism in general.

Footnotes

[12] Knost, Organisation, 258-260.

[13] Knost, Organisation, 261.

[14] Knost, Organisation, 261.

[15] Author’s observation in 1992.