Inside a Sufi prayer house, also called a Zawiya, in Algeria 🇩🇿 c. 1922
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A Zawiya is a religious building honoring a patron saint's memory and dedicated to Quranic and religious education.
Their history began in the 1400's when local village authorities began safeguarding the Muslim teachings being lost due to conflict by erecting zawiyas in each confederation of tribes.
Scholarly students were selected at the end of the fourteenth century and the beginning of the fifteenth century; after preliminary local Quranic studies, they were then sent to the Al-Azhar mosque in Egypt, passing either through Fez or Kairouan to perfect their skills and doctrinal training.
The return of these hundreds of Maghrebian theologians after a journey of several years of study in the Mashreq allowed the creation of the Zawiyas, which perpetuated religious influence.
The advent of the Reconquista and the massive exodus of Andalusian Muslims towards the centers of the Maghreb brought with them a version of Muslim mystic inherited from Ibn Arabi and Abdul Qadir Gilani, which became embedded in the landscape of Maghrebian Sufism.