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Islam Tetkikleri Dergisi, vol.13, no.1, pp.293-319, 2023 (Scopus)
Zāwiya, as a polysemous term, refers to a Sufi institution, as well as to the concepts of khanqāh and ribāt (Sufi lodges). On the other hand, however, it also denotes more modest architectural and organizational institutions built in suburban areas. Nevertheless, the term zāwiya has also been employed in the Syro-Egyptian region for describing the institutions of the central mosques of cities, in which scholars and their lessons in religious disciplines were supported regularly by endowments. This article deals with the eight zāwiyas of the Mosque of Amr b. al-Ās in Cairo, and particularly the most significant of them, the Zāwiya of Imām al-Shāfi'ī. By analyzing the narratives of two major khitat (topographical urban history) works compiled by Ibn Duqmāq and al-Maqrīzī and comparing them with other chronicles and biographical dictionaries of the period, this article argues that the mosque-zāwiyas differed from the Sufi zāwiyas and that the zāwiyas, which formerly only denoted study circles held by scholars with their own initiatives in the mosques, turned into endowed, long-lasting, and prestigious institutions of learning with the proliferation of madrasas in Egypt during the 6th/12th century.