Gleanings from al-Maqrizi IX: The Waqf and Tax Exemption

MS

With this post I want to look at what al-Maqrizi had to say about the Madrasa of Sultan Barquq (1384 A.D.) in the center of historic Cairo. Since the madrasa would sit in this highly symbolic area, Sultan Barquq spared no expense, and in terms of size it is especially impressive. In fact, it is so towering that it’s hard to get a really good picture of it, since the street is not too wide here. The best I could do is look up in an image like the one above, or catch it obliquely with a view down the street (but then it blends in with the other monumental structures). Al-Maqrizi is especially colorful in his description of its grand scale:

He put every effort into making sure his madrasa was adorned with the greatest form, most perfect engineering, best construction, most splendid measurements, and broadest of scale, as if it compared to the achievements of Iram, gloried over the works ‘Ad, and held up to ridicule the constructions of the Amalekites.

Iram is an ancient city mentioned in the Qur’an, notable for its pillars and greatness. In the end, however, it meets punishment from God. ‘Ad are a legendary people mentioned in the Qur’an and probably referring to an ancient kingdom in Yemen whose memory was still alive in Arabia. The people of ‘Ad were also reputed by some to be the builders of the pyramids. Mention of the Amalekites takes us to the Hebrew Bible and not the Qur’an, but early on the notion of the Amalekites entered Arabic historiography. Notably none of these comparisons are particularly complimentary. Sultan Barquq is portrayed as vying with ancient godless types as he raises his mosque to a stupendous height. Since Sultan Barquq is not on al-Maqrizi’s good list foron account of his economic policies, it’s hard not to see a kind of coded put-down here. This may help to explain why this entire section did not make it into the Khitat but only into the musawwada or rough draft of the Khitat.

But this text from the musawwada is a full entry and worth analyzing on its own. One element that is ubiquitous in al-Maqrizi’s description of mosques is information about the waqf associated with them. That’s a word I regularly translate as “pious endowment.” A certain amount of property would be registered as a part of a waqf and the profits from that property were then dedicated in perpetuity (theoretically) to the maintenance of a mosque or other religious structure. The properties dedicated to a mosque might include agricultural land, markets, or apartment houses. Rents would be regularly collected and those rents went for the upkeep of the mosques and other religious structures. Important to see here is that there was thus no need for fundraising on the part of mosques to pay imams or muezzins (who give the call to prayer). These salaries as well as the day-to-day upkeep of the mosque were covered by the income of these properties.

Large institutions like a madrasa (a school) received particularly large endowments to fund lectureships and the maintenance of students. (Our modern notion of an “endowed chair” at a university goes back to these medieval Islamic ways of funding education.) This section on the Madrasa of Sultan Barquq gives a glimpse of how this worked:

The madrasa was established as a congregational mosque with the Friday sermon at it. It was also a khanqah and learned lectures were given here: one for each of the four schools of Islamic law, one for commentary on the Qur’an, one for hadith, and one on the readings of the Qur’an.

MS

Not every mosque in the medieval period had a Friday sermon, but those that did needed extra funding to pay for the khatib or preacher. The building also functioned as a khanqah (involving students dedicated to Sufism) and had various endowed lectureships. Next al-Maqrizi provides a glimpse of the upkeep of the students who would live here. During a visit to this mosque I stepped into some of the “dorm” rooms in which students lived. They are empty now, just bare rooms with stone walls.. dust on the floors. I love to imagine what life would have been like in a room like this.

What a student received in upkeep al-Maqrizi explains:

The Sultan ordered for each of the students a daily ration of bread and cooked meat, along with a monthly stipend of dirhams, soap, oil, and sweets.

So students didn’t have to pay for higher education, they were rather maintained like modern graduate students on a small stipend, which included bread and cooked meat (i.e. board). The madrasa had a kitchen, and students every day got their food.

This was an ingenious system, but the drawback for these pious endowments was that they were liable to get into trouble in the midst of a dire economic downturn. Just as we have recently seen so much wealth evaporate in our current downturn, the same could happen to these investments. Egypt went through a time of terrible scarcity around 1406 A.D., and al-Maqrizi (who lived through this) reports on the effects to this madrasa:

The situation of the madrasa continued in order, its state protected, and its daily and monthly outlays regular until the events after the year 806 [1403 A.D.] occurred, when food was discontinued because of the scarcity of various things.

In the time of scarcity as food prices shot up, the endowment now brought in far too little for expenses.. and if food is discontinued then we have to assume that students were not doing too well. In his monograph on Mamluk Economics, al-Maqrizi describes the effect of this 1406 downturn on the different social classes of Egypt. Students of theology and legists (i.e. those who receive fixed stipends) were not in great shape: “…these are either dead or wishing death because of the calamity that has befallen them” (75). Those stipends now looked pitiful.

Another hazard for pious endowments was seizure by a greedy successor. Al-Maqrizi follows this particular endowment and notes its eventual fate:

Then it seemed proper in the opinion of Sultan Faraj that he renew the madrasa of his father with a pious endowment that he created anew. So he made the area Anbuba of Giza a part of its pious endowment. He brought back to the madrasa the food ration until al-Nasir Faraj was killed in the year 815 [1412 A.D.] and amir Shaykh took control over the land and made void many of the recent pious endowments. He took Anbuba from the pious endowment of this madras and delivered it instead as a fief for one of his associates.

Lots of good details here to see how these waqfs functioned. Following the economic collapse many of the endowments had lost value, and so the successor (and son) of Sultan Barquq renewed the endowment by adding new property to it. This was a large piece of land, and so it would give a new burst of funding to the madrasa. But then once that Sultan was killed (hazardous job) a new Sultan took over who, lusting after valuable land, voided this endowments and gave out the land as a reward to companions. This is a pretty common fate for endowments, especially in this latter period of Mamluk history.

When I try to explain the institution of the waqf to students I point to the importance of the 501(c)(3) tax exampt status in the US. In 200 years if someone re-creates our world, and tries to understand why our education institutions look the way they do, they will need to start with the official government role in encouraging private giving to schools. This works for just about any private college, but take Marquette University for example:

All those buildings have names, and if you look at the key you will see building names such as David A. Straz, Jr. Hall, Todd Wehr Chemistry, and many others. And if you Google the names for these buildings you often find that these are very wealthy men who gave huge gifts to the university. David A. Straz, Jr. can be found on the Internet granting millions of dollars to help build a performing arts center in Tampa Bay, Florida. Todd Wehr founded the Wehr Steel Company and was very successful. We have a society that allows indivduals to grow extraordinarily rich, but then we give inducements (financial and social) to get them to give their money to non-profit educational institutions. The “look” of our modern institutions is a result of this policy, just as the “look” of medieval Cairo was a result of the policy of establishing a waqf. Note that one result is absolutely parallel: a scattering of buildings that bear the name of the rich donor who made them possible. That is, in the end, what these mosques and other religious structures in Cairo are: socially applauded means to continue their name and reputation.