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ISLAMIC SITES IN
DAMASCUS |
| Madrasat al-Firdaws |
| Madrasat al-Firdaws is one of the greatest religious complexes to be erected during the Ayyubid period. Its patron was a powerful Ayyubid woman, Dayfah Khâtûn. She was Salah al-Din's niece and daughter-in-law who independently ruled Aleppo for nearly 20 years. As a resident of the Aleppo Citadel she intended that the complex be constructed as a royal mausoleum, endowing it with a turbe, a mosque, a ribat to house Sufis, a madrasa for religious education and an abundant waqf endowment. |
| umayyad mosque of aleppo |
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The minaret is a fine example of AH 5th- / AD 11th-century Syrian stonework
commissioned by an urban notable of Aleppo, Qadi (Judge) Ibn al-Khashshab. It
belongs to an Umayyad Mosque, an important building similar to the Great Mosque
of Damascus which was renovated extensively by the Seljuqs, Atabegs and Mamluks.
The minaret reveals a continuation of Aleppo's native architectural heritage.
Historical records reveal that Ibn al-Khashshab took the initiative to rebuild
the minaret. Thus it is not a manifestation of eastern-inspired Turkic taste but
rather that of an Aleppine Arab's. Made of limestone and designed with a square base of 4.95 m sq, it is approximately 45 m high with 140 steps spiralling inside its length to reach the muezzin's balcony. It consists of six stories; the exterior decoration is divided respectively into five horizontal fields, topped by a domed wooden canopy. Exquisite Atabeg-period kufic and thuluth inscriptions are carved into the stone at each level. The higher up one goes, the more elaborate the decoration and the more ostentatious the dedication in the inscription following the order of political hierarchy. At the highest level is the basmala: “in the name of God” and the dedication to the powerful sovereignty of the Seljuq Sultan. The next level down reveals dedication to the Seljuq Turkish prince who governed Aleppo. The third level is inscribed with the founder's name, Qadi Muhammad Ibn Khashshab, then a blessing generally quoted from the Qur'an to anyone who builds a mosque, and lastly, the first floor bears only a simple and elegant cartouche of the architect's name and date of construction: “Made by Hasan bin Mufarraj al-Sarmani in the year three and eighty and four hundred.” The decorative moulding is designed in harmony with the status of the epigraphic inscriptions. The first story is undecorated except for the cartouche. The second story with its Qur'anic inscription is decorated with a moulded ribbon of widely-spaced tri-lobed arches and moulded pilasters. These stone mouldings meander uninterrupted around the tower's faces, a decorative feature of Aleppo's architecture since antiquity. On the third level are simple mouldings of classical columns on the corners. The fourth storey is decorated by four pairs of heavily moulded poly-lobed arches set on Corinthian capitals; in the centre of each there is a small six-lobe framed circular window reminiscent of the Umayyad stone carving at the Muschatta Palace. The fifth storey is the most ornate, with large square windows framed by tri-lobed and cusped arches that continue in a bracketed arcade around the corners of the tower, echoing the decoration on the second floor. At the top is the main cornice of the tower. It is made of flat niches – as opposed to concave muqarnas cells – and entirely decorated with tiny arabesques. The style of this minaret's decoration reveals the continuity of Syrian pre-Islamic and Roman architectural heritage. |
