The broad range of ethnic affiliations among scholarly elites of early-modern al-Azhar presents a compelling case-study for investigating the ways in which difference was mapped onto urban space or place in the imperial domains. Archival research reveals ethnic and economic fault-lines between Muslim students who were part of a live-in fraternity system (riwaqs), and competing interest groups (e.g. Sufi mendicants, the poor, and non-funded students) all living in al-Azhar in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Hailing from the far reaches of the Ottoman empire and beyond, Maghribis (North Africans), Ethiopians, Syrians, Yemenis, Anatolians, and Egyptians comprised some of the ethnic groups represented by al-Azhar’s fraternities. In the early Ottoman period, al-Azhar resembled a city within a city, “a world that was richly mapped,” not just to its residents but to notaries of al-B?b al-‘Al? court, the main administrative court of Ottoman Cairo, who documented legal contracts and court appointments (taqr?r al-na?ar) of al-Azhar property (e.g., living units and storage implements). Issued by the chief kadi of Cairo, court appointments were part of an Ottoman initiative to control and archive the assignment, transfer, and recirculation of various kinds of capital tied up in waqfs, such as positions at religious institutions, property, stipends, and rights to bread. Taqrirs registered in al-Bab al-‘Ali court reveal the introduction, development, and expansion of a neighborhood system (haras) inside al-Azhar as early as the seventeenth century. Resembling alleyways, al-Azhar’s neighborhoods were sites of living units and storage implements, and mapped difference onto its urban fabric. The structuring and mapping of al-Azhar’s property and space intersected with an institution-wide culture of competition and survival that increasingly brought al-Azhar's residents to court. Azharis made claims, established rights, and acquired various capital through a strategic use of Ottoman courts. Documents produced by court scribes presented residents opportunities to maximize profits from al-Azhar’s endowments (waqfs), which were unevenly distributed across communities. The distribution of capital through waqfs enabled patrons of al-Azhar to shape notions of boundary formation and group identity. Court procedure and legal requirements compelled notaries to map al-Azhar’s indeterminate and heterogeneous space into a language that was uniform. While property site descriptions may or may not reflect an actual view of al-Azhar’s complex, they reveal ways in which space itself became recontextualized and reinterpreted in the Ottoman period, through the combination of endowment activity, court practices, and legal convention.