Zāwiyah

A Sufi lodge or hospice — the small centres of worship, learning, and hospitality that Ibn Battuta relied on throughout his travels as the primary infrastructure of Islamic civil society. These zawiyas provided free food, shelter, and spiritual companionship to travellers, scholars, and the poor, forming an informal network of support that functioned without any centralised coordination across the entire Muslim world. In Anatolia, Ibn Battuta describes the Akhis — young men of the zawiya tradition — who competed to provide the most generous hospitality to strangers, sometimes fighting over the honour of hosting him. The zawiya tradition reveals how deeply the obligation of hospitality was embedded in medieval Muslim civil life as a spiritual practice, not merely a social convention.

As understood in the classical tradition of Ibn Battuta and the scholars of his school.