A Culmination in Traditionalism 161 Sunni traditionalism through the endowment of madrasas, dtlr al-haditb, and other institutions focused on the preservation and dissemination of Sunni thought.4' These developments created favorable conditions for the careers of Zaynab bint al-Kamal and ‘A’isha bint Muhammad. The relative economic and social stability in Damascus during the eighth/fourteenth and ninth/fifteenth centuries contributed to the prosperity of several of its suburbs. Among these was al-Salihiyya to the northwest of Damascus, where both Zaynab bint al-Kamal and ‘A’isha bint Muhammad lived. The growth of this suburb is credited to a community of Hanbalis who, fleeing from the Crusaders, had migrated from Nablus to Damascus in the mid-sixth/twelfth century. The majority of these scholars were from the Banu Qudama, an influential clan of Hanbali ‘ulama Al-Salihiyya is an unusual example of a Muslim suburb that flourished foremost as a center of religious learning. Muhammad b. Tulun’s (d. 953/ 1546) history of al-Salihiyya lists numerous educational institutions, including congregational mosques, dur al-Qnr ’an, dur al-haditb, madrasas, and zaiviyas.4’’ Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘UmarI (d. 749/1349), a Damascene historian, described al-Salihiyya as a prosperous area that exhibited signs of a thriving city, such as “gardens, madrasas, ribats, important cemeteries, lofty buildings, hospitals, and busy markets filled with dry goods and other materials.” Ibn Battuta (d. 779/1377), another 46 Berkey, Transmission of Knowledge, 7-9. The Sunni inclinations of these dynasties and their patronage of Sunni institutions and scholars have been well documented. For a brief introduction, see P. M. Holt, The Age of the Crusades (New York: Longman, 1986), 77-81. A more extensive discussion may be found in Humphreys, “Expressive Intent.” 47 These Hanbalis from Palestine ultimately did not feel welcome in the predominantly Shafi‘I milieu of Damascus, which prompted their move to al-Salihiyya. The migration of this community has been studied by Joseph Drory, “Hanbalis of the Nablus Region in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries,” Asian and African Studies 22 (1988): 93-112; and Daniella T. Heller, “The Shaykh and the Community: Popular Hanbalite Islam in the 12th-13th Century Jabal Nablus and Jabal Qasyun,” Studia Islamica 79 (1994): 103-20. Drory explains that the Hanbali refugees were often called maqadisa (plural of maqdisi) either because of their origins from Nablus, adjacent to Jerusalem ( al-bayt al-muqaddas ), or because they were from a vaguely defined territory termed al-ard al-muqaddasa in the Qur’an; Drory, “Hanbalis of the Nablus Region,” 98. The Hanbalis of Damascus are also the subject of a chapter in Michael Cook’s Commanding Right and Forbidding Wrong in Islamic Thought (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chapter 7. 48 Muhammad b. Tulun, al-Qala’id al-Jawhariyya fi Ta’rikh al-Salihiyya , ed. Muhammad Duhman (Damascus: Maktabat al-Dirasat al-Islamiyya, 1949), 49-211. See also Shakir Mustafa, Madinat al- ‘Ilm: Al Qudama wa ’l-Salihiyya (Damascus: Dar Talas, 1997). 49 Ibn Fadl Allah al-‘Umari al-Dimashql, “Masalik al-Absar,” manuscript excerpted in Madinat Dimashq ‘inda al-Jughrafiyyin wa’l-Rahhalin al-Muslimin , ed. Salah al-Dln alMunajjid (Beirut: Dar al-Kitab al-Jadld, 1967), 226.