Endowments · a Light

A soup kitchen endowed in 1552 is still serving in Jerusalem

Hurrem Sultan, wife of Suleiman and known in Europe as Roxelana, endowed a complex in Jerusalem in 1552: a mosque, a hostel for travellers and a public kitchen. The deed she registered assigned the revenue of named villages and shops to pay for it and specified what was to be cooked, how much bread each person got, and who was to be served first. The kitchen fed several hundred people a day in the sixteenth century. It has run, with interruptions and much reduced, ever since, and meals are still handed out from the Haseki Sultan foundation in the Old City. The endowment outlived the empire that produced it because the deed made the property unsellable.

Haseki Hurrem Sultan · Jerusalem, 1552