their beards and leave their mustaches, which is contrary to the sunnah. They adopted this practice in imitation of their shaykh Ḥaydar: when the infidels captured him they shaved his beard and left his mustache, so his followers copied him in that—while he himself is excused and rewarded. The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) forbade this (1), and their shaykh is no valid precedent for them. A zawiyah (Sufi lodge) was built for them in the outskirts of Damascus, near al-ʿAwniyyah.
On Wednesday, the eighteenth of Dhu’l-Ḥijjah of this blessed year, the funeral gathering was held for the founder of the Badrāʾiyyah endowment (2), Shaykh Najm al-Dīn ʿAbd Allah ibn Muḥammad al-Badrāʾī (3) al-Baghdādī, lecturer at the Niẓāmiyyah and the caliphate’s envoy to kings in distant lands on grave matters and the mending of dire circumstances. He was a distinguished, accomplished, dignified, and humble scholar. In Damascus he built a fine madrasa on the site of Emir Sāma’s house, stipulating that its resident remain unmarried and that the jurist teach at no other school, intending thereby to keep the scholar’s mind free and wholly devoted to the pursuit of knowledge (4); yet this produced much disorder and, for some, considerable harm (5).
Our shaykh, the eminent scholar and head of the Shāfiʿīs in Syria and elsewhere, Burhān al-Dīn Abū Isḥāq Ibrāhīm, son of Shaykh Tāj al-Dīn al-Fazārī (6), professor of this madrasa and son of its first professor, related that when the founder attended the inaugural lesson there and Sultan al-Nāṣir was present, the waqf (endowment) deed was read aloud (7). In it was the clause: “No woman shall enter it.” The sultan asked, “Nor a child?” The founder replied, “Our master the sultan, our Lord does not strike with two sticks (8)(9).” Whenever he recounted this story he would smile, may Allah have mercy on him.
He (10) was the first to teach in the madrasa, followed by his son Kamāl al-Dīn. He entrusted its supervision to Wajīh al-Dīn ibn Suwayd, and it has remained in that family to this day. At certain times the judge Shams al-Dīn ibn al-Ṣāʾigh assumed its oversight, but it was taken from him once their right to the position was affirmed. Al-Badrāʾī endowed for this