"In total, Egypt, the mother of the country, east and west, we are not surprised by what is said about the good and the bad ... And the sentence is that its people have favorable minds, and increased intelligence.
(Ayashi, describing the natures of the people of Egypt in his time)
Throughout the thirteenth century, Egypt remained until the advent of the modern era, with the advent of civil aircraft in the second half of the twentieth century, a meeting place for pilgrims arriving for Hajj and Umrah and seeking sciences from the countries of Andalusia, Morocco, West and Central Africa (Voodoo, Takrur, Sudan, etc.), and in these prolonged centuries Moroccan scholars and travelers visited Egypt And Andalusians were highly accurate in describing Egyptian scenes, events, topography, architecture, customs and traditions throughout the ages and ages. Perhaps the most famous of them was Ibn Jubair Al-Andalusi, Ibn Battuta, Al-Muqri, Ibn Rashid Al-Sabti, Al-Abdri and hundreds of others.
And all of these wrote about Egypt in its different eras historical information on a great degree of importance and reliability, with which the features of the Egyptian personality are evident throughout this long history that extends to one thousand three hundred, and perhaps the most important of them is the late travels and jurist Abu Salem Al-Ayashi (d. 1090 AH / 1679 AD) who visited the East Al-Arabi three times for the Hajj and the request for science and licenses, and he stayed in all of this in Egypt and inspected its scholars and its flowers and the natures of its people and it is under Ottoman sovereignty. Who is Ayashi? What is his voyage, which he called "table water" or "life trip"? How was Egypt, and its beating heart, Al-Azhar and its scholars, four centuries ago, in his view? This is what we will see in our next lines.
In the High Atlas, and specifically in the areas near Sajilmasa bordering the Sahara, west of the city of Midelt, the barbarian city of Ait Ayash is located, and in it the Ayyashs took this strategic area as a stable for them represented in a flat plain surrounded by mountains, in which a corner was built that has become an important role in the history of Morocco Al-Aqsa in the AH 11th / AD 17th century, and this family has made its mark in the history of this region, east of Morocco, near Algeria; For over a century, its angles, scholars and mujahideen have contributed to providing security and food, spreading knowledge and religious awareness [1].
The history of this important scientific family in eastern Morocco during that period was written by one of its sons, Abdullah bin Omar Al-Ayyashi, in his book “Revival and Recovery in the Translations of Sadat Ait Ayyash” [2], and the family members of this family received their scientific and religious training in their living angle as well as from other The scientific angles in that region, such as the guide and shield corners, formed libraries over time that were of importance to them, so that they became famous in the scientific and religious field in the region of Sijilmasa and its environs.
In the midst of this elaborate group of sciences and knowledge, Abu Salem Abdullah bin Muhammad bin Abi Bakr Al-Ayashi was born in the end of the month of Shaaban year 1037 AH / 1628 AD, and his education was grabbed by his father and relatives of the Ayyash scholars, then he went to the Qarawiyyin Mosque in Fez and the Zawiya of Nasserism and the celebrities of Moroccan scholars at the time. But that did not heal his yield and his request for science. He says: “I was the first of my suffering to demand and cling to the tails of literature. They commissioned the novel and were relieved of it from the burdens of know-how. So I took away from the flags who realized them in Morocco a little and did not recover what they have from what I find wrong, because they limited the books to what he became famous, and dispensed with What prevailed over what appeared without serials and small parts, and about the chain of transmission and the oddity of the news ”[3].
The motivation to seek science at the hands of the great scholars of his time in Morocco and the East was an important reason for the rush to Damietta, Alexandria, Cairo, Mecca, Medina, Jerusalem, Gaza, Ramle, Medina, and Makkah, and he made three trips for that. The third and last year was in 1072 AH / 1661AD, which he wrote in the name of “table water” ".
Then Al-Ayyashi set out from Sijlmasa, boycotting southern Algeria, then southern Tunisia, western Tripoli, and then Alexandria, and the epidemic has reached her family in that year 1661 AD, and Al-Ayyashi was the owner of Sufi mystics on the way of Abi Al-Hassan Al-Shazly, which is a method that spread in Morocco and Egypt together, Hardly passes over a guardian of the Awliya unless he shows respect and appreciation to him, and despite that he was adhering to the Sunnah, knowing it, eager to take leave from its elders and scholars on this trip, and when he approached Alexandria and neither he nor the Moroccan rider was able to enter it because of its epidemic The murderer, he wrote a poem to the Sufi scholar Abi Al-Abbasi Al-Mursi, and sent it with one of the Alexandrians to hang it in his shrine in the city, and in it he says:
I love him with an intruder *** on him and I have not followed his Jerusalem curriculum
May his grace attract him to *** guides him and protects me from impurity and abomination
He had pride, who after him condemned him ** and let alone whoever deserves it, for the sense [4]
It seems that the distress of the Awliya to pay adversity, diseases and epidemics was a general culture of that era, between scholars and the public alike, when Al-Ayyash left Alexandria and walked south in a sandy area with some palm trees, water, and monks, and it appears through the description that his descent was in the area of "Wadi Natrun" In the lake, he said: “And there I established chapters begging and seeking help from God, who in Egypt were among the holy ones in pushing the evil of the epidemic, because of the narrowness of hearts, and the syncretism of the cherub” [5].
El Ayachi mentioned that the descent of the Moroccan knee in Cairo to dock with the Egyptian knee heading for the Hijaz on the 27th of Shawwal every year was usually in those years, and the descent of the Moroccans every year in the second half of Ramadan, they stay in Cairo for a full month or a little more until travel And the departure for the Hejaz, and most of the merchants stayed in the agencies or khanates, which were houses that were intended for rental, on the upper floors where people live and in the courtyard and the lower floors linking beasts and animals, and goods and trades are stored, and another team was renting houses in the Al-Sulaibiya neighborhood and near the Ahmed bin Tulun Mosque because there The large markets of animals and others in Ramla Square, under the Citadel of the Mountain, so travelers buy from them all their needs and needs.
But Al-Ayyashi was a man of knowledge who taught her, and he would not be able to revoke his residence in Al-Azhar and its vicinity anywhere else in Cairo. Because his greatest goal was to find scholars and pillowcases from Sufism, and they live only in those areas, he says: “We sent some of our brothers and companions and they came with those who came to Cairo to go to a house near Al-Azhar, because many pilgrims descend the length of (the mosque) to get close to [Maidan] Al-Ramla [below Al-Jabal Castle] is the place of the Dujab market and what is needed for travel matters, and whoever has a trade is revealed by proxies, and we do not equate a location near Al-Azhar ”[6].
Al-Azhar attained in the Ottoman era a prominent international position in the entire Islamic world, for various reasons, foremost of which is the capacity of its endowments, and the non-interference of the Ottomans in educational policy with it, which is confirmed by Dr. Nasser Abdullah by saying: "The most important thing that distinguished the study in Al-Azhar [at the time] Exactly, as it guaranteed the student the freedom to study, so he apprised the scholars who wanted, as each student was free to remain in Al-Azhar as long as he wished, and the professors held scientific seminars around the pillars of Al-Azhar ”[7].
But Hossam Abdel Ati, in his study "The Sheikh of the Al-Azhar Mosque in the Ottoman Era", expands in explaining the reasons that led to the universality of Al-Azhar at the time, due to the increased revenues of Al-Azhar and its endowments and the support of the Ottoman sultans, especially Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent to him; So, it was a certain good for scholars and science students alike, then increasing the importance of Cairo at that time as the most important cultural center in the Arab East during the Ottoman era compared to Istanbul, which was the political center, and the predominance of study in the Turkish language in it, and the fact that Cairo was also a meeting place for Moroccan and African pilgrims had contributed to this reputation and status For Al-Azhar, in which education has become a justification for obtaining the highest ranks in all the Levant and Maghreb countries [8].
And Ayachi himself tells us about Egypt in the minds of Moroccans who preceded him since Ibn Khaldun, who died three centuries before him, from incoming and outgoing until his time, he says: "In total, Egypt or the mother of the country east and west, we are not surprised by anything that is said about it from good and bad ... And in bulk, its people have preponderant minds, And extra intelligence, whoever used it in goodness outperformed others, and whoever used it in others was so too ”[9]. Perhaps this description shows us the reasons that made Al-Azhar a global Islamic university at the time, given Egypt’s scientific, cultural, economic and geographical importance, so everyone who wanted something in it and found it, as Ayyashi tells.
In spite of Al-Ayyashi's keenness to live near the Al-Azhar mosque for a long period of time, he says: "We did not find a house for rent (rent) near Al-Azhar, with the intensity of our desire to do so ... and made us require a house to live in. So we found nothing but the end of the day in a place called Al-Baradakiya, and we found there a house It contains a large number of houses, but it is four hundred steps away from Al-Azhar, close to the scenery (mosque) of Al-Hussein, may God be pleased with him. [10]
Al-Ayyashi wanted to spend most of his time in Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, prayer, study and meeting with the great scholars of Al-Azhar in the hadith, interpretation, jurisprudence and mysticism, on the first day of his entry to Cairo he meets Sheikh Abdul-Jawad al-Turaini, one of the jurists who taught Al-Azhar, and Sheikh Ibrahim bin Muhammad al-Maimouni (d. 1079 AH), one of the scholars The hadith and the great jurisprudence, and he was very famous throughout Morocco and Egypt, had "taken the age from his powers what appeared to be his say and action, and yet he enjoyed his hearing and his insight ... I entered it after the afternoon and found it to be corrected with some students as a synthesis in the topics related to the Almighty saying : (And your Lord would not have destroyed the villages with injustice), with another verse in which he came in wonder, and God was pleased with him - to meet us and dishonor ... and we intend to break his fast with him that night [from Ramadan] with a group of brothers, so we did and gave us that night Twenty-seven night, and in fact, all nights in that mosque are all-powerful because it is covered in remembrance, recitation, and education throughout the night and the ends of the day, so worship does not stop from day and night, summer and winter, as it is unparalleled in the mosques of the world, aside from the three mosques (Al-Haram, Nabawi and Al-Aqsa) ”(1 1].
He was not forgotten to meet with the Sheikh of Al-Malikiyah and the hadith of the Prophet in Al-Azhar and the whole of Egypt in his time Sheikh Abd al-Salam bin Ibrahim Al-Qalani al-Maliki (d. 1078 AH) who "is the heir of his father’s sciences, and the feat of his companions who have no similarity" as he describes it, and Abu Salem Al-Ayashi discussed it in Several doctrinal and medical issues, and he expressed his objection to some of what the sheikh mentioned, as he met with Sheikh Sultan bin Salama Al-Mazahi Al-Masry (d. 1075 AH) Sheikh of intonation and recitation in Egyptian homes, which "was in his creation - may God be pleased with him - intensity, does not leave anyone to kiss his hand often ... And he does not bear the students who read him the slightest mistake that falls from them. Rather, he exaggerates in bashing and reprimanding. Rather, he may have increased insults, and people bear that from him to achieve it and his uniqueness in doing so.
El Ayachi cleverly insinuates the nature of the Egyptian personality, which was tolerated by politicians and scholars alike unlike the Moroccans, as he says: “And the Moroccans, with their fierceness in their morals, are hardly patient with reading it [i.e. Sheikh Sultan Al-Mazahi]; most of his lieutenants are the people of his country [i.e. the Egyptians]; When they were gripped by the breadth of creation, the tolerance of harm, and the patience with which the people of Qatar were not matched by their countries. [13]
Al-Ayashi goes on to talk about the rest of the famous scholars of Al-Azhar and Egypt who he met and took from them and authorized him with their support, and even some of his scientific debates with them, and in all of this he is a man who adheres to the fringes of his religion and belief, described in high eloquence, and a strong deep understanding, who understands the importance of Egypt and its scholars and flowers. In that time, he knows that it is one of the most important sources of science that the seeker of knowledge should not miss the journey to.
He was also keen to visit Cairo markets because of the antiques and precious books he saw in him that he did not see elsewhere, he says: “And I was going all day long in criminal cases, setting up the reasons for travel and buying books, and God has facilitated a sentence that I bought about fifty of its copies. From the scout, I read the Garbardi sign that I bought on the night of our exit by our lover and brother, Sheikh Ali Damascus, from a man who had attached to the camp. [14]
These are some of the secrets of the angles that we see in the journey of Sheikh Al-Faqih Abi Salem Al-Ayashi Al-Maghribi to Cairo and Al-Azhar in the mid-seventeenth century A.D., in a severe abbreviation, and it contains benefits, generations, and documented information that refute allegations that Egypt in the Ottoman era was a country steeped in ignorance or backwardness or Reaction from its scientific or economic gates, on the contrary, we see it at Al-Ayashi and others as a meeting place for races from all countries of the world as described, and that is a clear fact!
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