Introduction

Saladin founded his khānqāh– a hospice known as the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ or al-Ialā aīya– in 569/1173 in order to house Sufis newly arrived in Cairo. He built it in the heart of the city and funded it with an endowment (waqf) to ensure that it would continue to provide a home for Sufis long after he had passed away. But the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ did not simply house itinerant Sufis. Saladin also created a stipendiary position (man‚ib) at the top of the hierarchy of the khānqāh's organisation, known as the shaykh al-shuyūkh (literally ‘the master of masters’, hereafter ‘Chief Sufi’). This office was a kind of Sufi counterpart to that of the Chief Judge (qā∂ī al-qu∂ āt). The Chief Sufi was supposed to mentor the Sufis of the khānqāh and to act as a liaison between the ruling elite and local communities of Sufis in Egypt and Greater Syria. Theoretically, then, the authority of the Chief Sufi was geographically coterminous with Ayyubid rule itself. In reality it did not work so neatly. As for those Sufis who lived in the khānqāh, the endowment stipulated that they be given daily rations of food and sweets, small stipends, and even time away from the khānqāh to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. The Chief Sufi himself received a substantial stipend in addition to the power and prestige that accompanied such a prominent position. In 724/1325, however, the Mamluk sultan al-Nā‚ ir Muaammad moved the centre of state-sponsored Sufism to his new khānqāh, located north of Cairo at Siryāqūs. While the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ remained open, the office of the Chief Sufi moved to the new khānqāh and with it the prestige that had formerly belonged to the Saʿīd al-Su ʿadāʾ. Nevertheless, during those 150 years of Ayyubid and early Mamluk rule, Saladin's khānqāh was the centre of state-sponsored Sufism in Egypt and housed hundreds if not thousands of Sufis from all over the Muslim world.