Khanqah (Sufi lodge)

A khanqah is an institution that houses and teaches Sufis; Cairo's first, founded by Salah al-Din, was the Dar Sa'id al-Su'ada, of which nothing remains. ^{1 2} The oldest surviving one is the khanqah of Baybars al-Jashankir (1307-1310). ²

Yeomans holds that the line between madrasa and khanqah was always blurred in Egypt, and that Sufi orders came to be housed within madrasas, since both taught; teaching was at the heart of Sufi life, and many early Persian madrasas grew from Sufi foundations. ^{1 2} He adds, in his account, that Sufi teaching rested on a mystical theology sometimes at odds with law-based thought, so that Sufis were esteemed while some jurists saw their organisation and transcendental theology as potentially troubling. ² The khanqah-madrasa of Sanjar al-Jawli (1303-1304), where it is unclear which space was madrasa and which khanqah, shows the merging. ¹

The deed of Baybars al-Jashankir's khanqah shows how such houses ran: a hundred resident bachelor Sufis and up to three hundred non-residents, who read the Qur'an, attended prayers and praised God, with a shaykh, imams, muezzins, servants and a doctor, and an attached ribat for the needy. ³ Ibn Khaldun directed it, and Yeomans sees the appointment of so eminent a jurist as proof of how closely Sufi orders were then tied to Sunni teaching. ⁴