The Last Mamluk Princess, Her Endowment, and Her Family History

Fāṭima, the granddaughter of the actual last Mamluk sultan Qānṣawh al-Ghawrī, married the Ottoman commander Lālā Muṣṭafā Pasha after the fall of the Mamluk sultanate. In collaboration with her husband, she founded a mosque in Jenin, Palestine, and converted a number of properties in Syria into waqf for supporting this mosque and for other purposes.Compared with Lālā Muṣṭafā Pashā’s waqf, that of Fāṭima was modest in size. However, the main objects in both these awqāf were similar. Both Fāṭima’s and Muṣṭafā’s complexes included a mosque, a soup kitchen for the poor, and rooms for travellers. Both were located on the same route from Damascus to Jerusalem. Additionally, a large part of Muṣṭafā’s waqf property was in the same areas as that of Fāṭima’s. The endowments of Fāṭima and Lālā Muṣṭafā Pasha were therefore apparently a joint project, and both were administered together by their heirs, the Mardam Bey family.The Mardam Beys became prominent in the middle of the nineteenth century, after they succeeded in having their claim to the endowments of their ancestors Lālā MuṣṭafāPasha and Fāṭima officially authorized. Thereafter, this family has produced a number of notable figures in not only political and economic but also cultural areas in and beyond Syria.The present paper examines the deed for Fāṭima’s waqf and traces her family history through other sources in order to contribute to the discussion about women, waqf, and family in Middle East studies.