Alwization in Islamic Heritage with application on Mamluk mosques in Cairo

Document Type : Original Article

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أستاذ مساعد- معهد سيناء العالي للسياحة والفنادق- رأس سدر - مصر

Abstract

Almost all members of the Alawite dynasty - Muhammed Ali’s dynasty- gave an obvious interest to Islamic monuments and heritage remains of former rulers in Egypt during islamic states and dynasties. They did not only build new buildings bearing their names, but also renovated, added, or restored already existing buildings to commemorate their rule. In this paper, we introduce the theory of Alawization as a major factor on Alawis’ contributions in Egypt generally. Alwization is a new term refers to a process of society’s shifting towards Alawi touches and influences; Alawization is totally different from Alawism which defines followers of imam Ali. It can be used to describe the overtly Alawi interest with society where they live including heritage. Although Egypt enjoys with variety of heritage and richness of historical eras’ leavings, Alawis focused in islamic monuments in particularly. It couldn’t be named as Islamization because Egypt was already a Muslim country before their coming. Motivations in that case could be interpreted as a desire to leave their influence on such heritage, to assure their existence and strength their nearness from Egyptians whose major religious performance was throughout those remains and traces. The main debate of this article is to determine the motives of this quantity of restorations held on islamic monuments by Mohamed Ali’s dynasty rulers, pashas and khedives by application on Mamluk mosques which occupies a great percentage of those restorations and interest. The article deals with the most important participations and analyzes driving forces of these restorations proving our claim of being a kind of Alwization.

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