Religion and Communities in Mamluk Lands

Between 1250 and 1517, Mamluk sultans ruled Egypt and much of Syria. The sultanate’s Bahri period (1250–1382) gave way to Burji rule (1382–1517), but both governments drew authority from Sunni Islam and supported institutions of learning and worship. Religious life also involved Sufi communities and Christian and Jewish congregations, whose leaders and institutions interacted with sultans and officials.

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Sunni learning and public authority

Sunni Muslims followed four principal madhhabs, or schools of Islamic law: Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi‘i and Hanbali. These were traditions for interpreting law within one branch of Islam, not separate religions. A qadi was a judge who heard cases. In 1265 Sultan Baybars appointed a chief qadi for each school in Cairo. This arrangement gave the four legal traditions a place in the judiciary; it also let litigants seek decisions grounded in the doctrine of a school other than their own. The judicial establishment therefore worked across several recognized legal traditions.

Learning took place in mosques and in madrasas, colleges for religious and scholarly instruction. In Cairo, some institutions combined a mosque with a madrasa or brought together several services in one complex. Their salaried teachers taught law alongside Quran interpretation, reports about the Prophet Muhammad’s words and actions, Arabic grammar, Quran recitation and medicine. This patronage made scholarly posts part of the city’s institutional life and drew learned people to Cairo, Damascus, Aleppo and Jerusalem.

The caliphate added a distinct kind of public authority. After Mongol forces destroyed Baghdad in 1258, Baybars installed an Abbasid caliph in Cairo in 1261. The caliph was a ceremonial and religious figure, while the sultan retained the government and military command. Cairo’s Abbasid line continued until the Ottoman conquest in 1517, providing a recognized symbol of Islamic leadership in the capital.

Religious scholars could also challenge one another and the government. Ibn Taymiyya, a Hanbali scholar who taught in Damascus from the late thirteenth century, criticized some theological and devotional practices. His disputes brought public trials and periods of imprisonment, showing how scholarship could enter political life as well as classroom teaching.

Sufi devotion and Cairo lodges

A Sufi was a Muslim devoted to a path of spiritual discipline. One common practice was dhikr, the remembrance of God through repeated prayer or recitation. A khanqah was a lodge where Sufis lived, gathered and practiced their faith. Cairo’s Sa‘id al-Su‘ada’ lodge, founded before Mamluk rule, offers an example of how such communities engaged with the city: residents devoted part of each day to worship, held public rituals in the evening and paraded through the streets on Fridays. People from Cairo also visited the lodge to study with them.

The Khanqah of Baybars II shows how such a residence could also serve as a public monument. Built in Cairo in stages from 1307 to 1310, the complex joined a Sufi lodge, mosque and tomb and once housed around two hundred Sufis. After Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad took the throne from Baybars, he had Baybars’s titles removed from the building and closed the lodge for twenty years. A religious institution could thus express its founder’s standing and remain vulnerable to a change of ruler.

Christian and Jewish communities

Christians and Jews were governed as dhimmis, non-Muslim communities with a recognized but subordinate legal status. One obligation was the jizya, a poll tax imposed on non-Muslims. Communities had recognized leaders whom the government dealt with through formal titles and appointments. Coptic Christians also served in Egypt’s fiscal administration: Hibat Allah al-Sadid, a Coptic chief comptroller, served Sultan Qalawun in the late thirteenth century. Coptic expertise in tax and finance made officials such as him useful in the government bureaus.

Jewish congregations had their own religious officers and practices. A hazzan, or cantor, led prayers and often taught or explained scripture; on Sabbaths and festivals, a paytan composed or recited liturgical poems. These roles show how communal religious life continued alongside government recognition of community leaders.

In 1301, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad’s government required dhimmis to wear colored turbans and revived regulations associated with the Pact of Umar, a traditional set of rules for non-Muslim communities. Enforcing the decree provoked riots. In Fustat, old Cairo, the Suspended Church of the Virgin was closed that year and reopened in 1302 after the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, emperor intervened. The local congregation’s worship therefore became a matter of court policy and diplomacy beyond Egypt.

The Hejaz and the pilgrimage

The Hejaz, the western Arabian region containing Mecca and Medina, gave Mamluk rulers responsibilities beyond Egypt and Syria. The kiswa was the cloth covering sent for the Kaaba, the sanctuary at Mecca. Each pilgrimage season, Egypt sent keys to the Kaaba with the kiswa. A surviving copper key made in 1363 bears the name of Sultan al-Ashraf Sha‘ban and the date of its production. These objects linked Cairo’s court to the holy city and to the pilgrimage caravans from Cairo and Damascus that travelled toward the Hejaz.

Endowments behind religious institutions

Many religious and charitable institutions depended on a waqf, an endowment that assigned income from property to purposes named by its founder. Sultan Qalawun’s Cairo complex, founded in 1284–85, joined a hospital, religious college and mausoleum; rents from commercial properties and a bathhouse helped support it. In this way, patronage turned property into continuing support for teaching, worship and care.