Islamic Madrasa

Timeline

1. c. 1245–1258Damascus · SyriaIn the late Ayyubid period, Syrian cities built four courtyard-style madrasas with waqf donations (such as the Sahibiyya in Damascus), establishing parallel Shafi'i and Hanafi instruction, with students' room and board sustained by the endowment.
2. 1258–1260Cairo and Damascus · LevantAfter the Mongols captured Baghdad and destroyed the scholarly centers of Mesopotamia, large numbers of scholars and manuscripts flowed to Cairo and Damascus under Mamluk rule. Local madrasas expanded enrollment, taking up Sunni jurisprudence and hadith studies, and became major scholarly centers of the eastern Islamic world.
3. 1256–1260Cairo · EgyptMamluk sultans and emirs built madrasas to proclaim religious legitimacy; madrasa buildings were integrated into mosque-mausoleum complexes, and jurists (muftis, qadis) mostly came from madrasa teaching lineages, tightly linking the educational system to local courts.