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The Mutual Influence between the Mamluk Interior Architecture
and Urban Planning in Damascus
Dr. Karam Abdallah
Instructor in Faculty of Art & Design
Interior Design Department
October University of Modern Science & Arts
ABSTRACT: In the Mamluk period Damascus returned to be the capital of the Levant area and
to be the main station of the Hajj convoys that goes to Mecca from all the countries in the east.
This research is based on the study of the relationship between political thought of the Mamluk
on the distribution of the important religious buildings in Damascus, and the impact on the urban planning of the city and the impact of all this on the interior architecture. Using the comparison between the field study and the discretion in the resources
The Mamluk sultans were new in Islamic religion so the main target for them to establish
their rules on the Islamic regions was to gain legitimacy from taking the role of protecting the
holy Islamic places, and to achieve that they followed several methods some had a significant
impact on architecture and urban planning for cities as following:
First: Make their first mission to fight the Crusaders and their expulsion from Jerusalem.
Second: Protect the pilgrimage route to Mecca in all the country under their control, which led
to emergence of the pilgrimage route again from Damascus to the south.
Third: In the same time the Mamluk policy involved to consolidate their rule to get closer to
the Islamic people through other social and intellectual ways, as publish fads related to religion
and exaggerated manifestations of religious ceremonies; the most important idea was the pilgrimage howdah, invented by El-Zaher Baybars in Damascus at the beginning of his reign as a
symbol to prove his sovereignty over the region which is moving from the begging of the pilgrimage route from Damascus mosques within a solemn celebrations. These former reasons
have had a major impact on the urban planning of the city as we shall see. Since the idea of the
rituals related to the pilgrimage was a need to create great mosques that should be able to accommodate large numbers of crowded people to celebrate the Hajj ceremonies so these mosques
should be placed on the road of pilgrimage starting from the gate of the citadel to the south in
alignment of the western city wall.
Fourth: Trying to be blessed in being closer to the buildings of the predecessor, who owned the
real legitimacy to rule the Islamic State. As the Mamluk gave a great care in choosing their
buildings sites, as the location of the building was expressing quite as important as architectural
significance, and possibly higher. Where Nasser Rabbat mentioned in his book that historians of
the Mamluk era did not care about the aesthetic values of the buildings that they mentioned in
their books, but the Waqf documents were describe the distribution of the internal spaces without describing the ornaments or decorative elements, beside that they paid a good attention to
tell the location of the building and mentioned all the important building s in the neighborly, this
shows how important is to choose the location of the important buildings.
Damascus considered as one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities, archaeological studies on the old city of Damascus carried out by Zack Dorothee showed that it based on the perpendicular streets planning since the Hellenistic era. This planning begin to change with the
converting to Islam until the Mamluk era the city became twisted alleys may end with blocked
lanes, and the and the urban architecture extended outside the city walls to several new places
the important of the are Sook Saroja in the north, Senjekdar district in the west and Al-Midan in
the south, this is the regions that will included in the survey. We will study the distribution of
the religious buildings of mosques and schools in these areas including the buildings that reportedly confined at Sovajee and Dorothee in Damascus. Some of them are still remaining
which will come within the scope of the field study, some of which ceased to exist that know
their descriptions of books and references.
The field study shows great diversity in the interior architecture design styles and we will
compare the distribution of buildings with interior architecture style, so we will take samples of
the most important buildings which contained in the attached table Figure 3, these samples were
selected because they were built of the rulers of Damascus so we can reach the results reflect the
Mamluk thought prevailing at the time.
We can note from the map Figure 2 that shows the distribution of mosques and schools in the
old city of Damascus inside and outside the walls increasing of the buildings density in the
north of Umayyad Mosque area, and the area between the castles and the straight street which
was named Sook Al-Kmh, as well as in the pilgrimage route, which starts from the locality AlSenjekdar in the alignment of the city wall and then the area turn toward the south, and also we
observe a similar intensity on both sides of Sook Saroja which runs from west to east north of
the city walls, though the attached diagram Figure 1 shows the distribution numbers, the explanation of this distribution are in the following:
North Umayyad Mosque area: We can note by tracking the dates construction of the most important architectural structures in the attached table that the first thing done by Sultan Baybars
upon receipt of power is to create a mausoleum and a school Al-Zaheria, and he chose the site in
the face of Al-Adelya school because of its religious and political fame, making the twins built a
complement and counterpart to each other’s bringing the two buildings as if they were one architectural unit. And its southern façade is an extension of the southern façade of Al-Adelya
school. Here we should be noted that Ayyubid had set up a number of important buildings adjacent to the north of the Umayyad Mosque notably Saladin mausoleum and Al-Rashaeya school,
this explain the architectural density in this area, that affirm the previously mentioned of the desire to neighboring buildings of former kings who gossip the legitimacy. So they built AlEkhnaeya School Figure 5 in the place of the Al-Rashaeya, directly followed by the AlJaqmaqyah School Figure 4 in the place of an old mausoleum. The concept of the twins buildings repeated again as these two schools constitute on architectural unit where the domes and
the great entrances of both buildings are faced each other.
West of the city: The early rulers of the Mamluk initiated to pay attention to the construction of
great mosques that are miniature copies of the Great Umayyad Mosque. This attention to the
tradition of the Umayyad mosque is due not only to the importance of the architectural and aesthetic values, but also for its religious reference to the Sunni group of Islam that the Ayyubid
dynasty then Mamluk tried to retrieve its control on the Islamic religion. This was achieved by
choosing appropriate sites that provide space for such great mosques, on the west of the old city
in the field overlook to Barada River branches, which means that choosing the suitable location
depended on availability of necessary landscape area, where the Great Mosques of Tinkyz and
Yalbuga and the Shazebkya School Figure 6 were built.
Pilgrimage rout: In the same time a new and important reason appeared for choosing a site to
build mosques and schools that reason is the pilgrimage root, and by knowing the ceremonial
rituals organized by the Mamluks before the pilgrimage season, we can consider that the pilgrimage route starts from Senjekdar district opposite the castle, and then the road runs south
where two important mosque were built Al-Kremy and Manjek.
South of the Castle area and the northern of Sook AL-kamh: We can note the density of
school buildings only for a relatively small space since this region is one of the most vital areas
in the Old City of Damascus and close to the public markets surrounding as Sook Al- Kamh in
the south and Al-Bzoryah in the east, and this building built in places far away from the main
public markets street, since it is imperative that this area was considered a residential area and it
contained some of the most important residential buildings as the hospital of Al Nouri and the
palace of Dar-Althahab in the east and Dar – Alsaada in the west. So many of the rulers and
princes used to live in this regain since the Ayyubid period, and the historical sources like AlNoaymy in his book about Schools in Damascus mentioned that many of them had transferred
his house to religion School after his death. The most fame were the Athrawyah School 580 AH
and the inner al-Shamya School 612 AH so many of the rulers and nobles did the same in the
Mamluk period. But most of these buildings are destroyed and their places are not located accurately nowadays but we can know about them from the historical researches as Sauvaget, and
Zack dorothee.
But when the Burjy Mamluk received the rule they change the tendency of choosing the site of
the religion buildings to the northern region of the walls of the city; Sook Saroja and its eastern
extension. Since these regions had reached their completeness urban in that era, the existing of
some Ayyubid religion buildings helped to developed this region as the external Al-Shamya
School, Al-Tawba and Al-Aqsab mosques and we can see that both of these two mosques were
built as the style of the Umayyad Mosque, even the arcaded from the Al-Shamya School that
still remain till now shows that this great school was built on the Umayyad Mosque style too. So
the remaining of these buildings in this region was an attractive factor encouraged the residential completion of Saroja region so the new religion building were built at the sides of the main
street of Saroja, which were the mosques of Moaayad, Al-Jawzah, Al-Ward, Belban and AlMoaalaq.
The impact of urban planning at the interior architecture:
We conclude from the foregoing that the political and religious thought was the main inspire
for construction and architectural style in the Mamluk period, that lead to choose the site of the
most important religious buildings to achieve their political aims that had very vital effect on the
distribution of the interior spaces.
Arcades style: When Mamluks wanted to build Mosques in the early period of their rule they
desired to imitate the style of Umayyad Mosque so they choose wide places out of the walls of
the Old Damascus far away from the crowded places inside the walls of the city which helped to
use the style of the opened courtyard surrounded by arcades.
Mamluks use several ways to imitate the Umayyad Mosque; the most important one was using
the plan, thus the mosques built with open courtyard, surrounded with four arcades the southern
one is the great one because it is in the qibla direction. This arcades look out to the open court
yard by semicircular arches, topped with another raw of arched windows. Also they added a
nave to the prayer hall of the Al-Kremy and Al-Ward mosques. And the minaret was built in the
middle of the northern arcade in Tenkiz and Al-Kremy, an addition to that all the mosques had
four entrances in the south, east and west typically as the Umayyad Mosque.
The schools, which were no less important from the religious and politic aspects than the
mosques in this era, were preferred to be built near the residential areas for its daily use, so it
was built inside the city and outside it in the north and west of the walls.
The impact of the site on the interior spaces of the schools appeared in several ways as following:
First: Schools of iwan style: This is the typical plan for schools which was adopted since the
Ayyubid period, since the qibla direction faced the south direction, the direction of the building
expended from north to south. The site chosen should enable enough space to make the qibla
iwan the great one, and we see that in Al-Afridonya Figure 7 and Shathebkya Figure 6 where we
note that the entrances put in the eastern façade in the both buildings which is the main façade,
but the direction of the mausoleum may varies according to the street location, as it should put
where it could look over the street in one of the corners of the building. So in Shathebkya it had
put in the southern western corner, as the façade is free and not attached to other buildings. But
Al-Afridonya has only one free façade, so the mausoleum put in the northern eastern corner to
look over to the street.
But the Tenkyz School Figure 8 is the only remain one that built with the iwan plan that located
inside the walls of the old city, it seems that the early building date and the builder Tinkez the
most strong ruler in Damascus build his school south of the palace of Dar al-Thahab in the place
of the Othman palace of Al- Azem, separated only with a street, it’s clear that the importance of
the builder of the school helped to offer the enough space to use the iwan plan inside the walls
of the city, so the entrance was put in the north which is the main façade to be look out to the
street. This important change in the planning of this building occurs as a result of the site of it.
Also this school does not have a mausoleum, which consider a rare situation that the other
schools should have the mausoleum of their builders, unless those which transferred from houses to schools.
Second: The complex plan: The most important sample is Al-Zaheria School, which was built
opposite to the Adelya School from the Ayyubid period, contained four iwans but they are not
symmetrical around one axis besides that the main entrance is opening to a transverse arcade,
and clearly we can note that the arrangement of the interior spaces are corresponding to the
Adelya School which consider as its architectural twin. The entrances are opposite to each other
moreover the two domes of the mausoleums are opposite of each other’s too, and we can see
how the architect was able to adjust the new exterior architectural mass to the older one. In the
other hand the mass of the mausoleum took a large space of the total space of the building because the importance of the owner. Although of the shifted of the façade of Al-Zaheria School
to the south of the street we can see that it looks like continues of the Adelya School, thus this
shifting helped to emphasis the both of the domes.
Another important sample of the twins’ buildings are Al-Ekhnaeya School Figure 5 and AlJaqmaqyah School Figure 4 on its west, both are built in the very close era, we can see in the attached picture the balance and symmetry of the interior spaces, the court yards and the mausoleums mass, here we should mention that the court yard ceiling of Al-Jaqmaqyah School was
closed lately in the 20th century and it was opened to the sky the same as Al-Ekhnaeya School.
Also the iwans of Al-Ekhnaeya School were opened to the courtyard and they had been closed
lately. Also we can see the symmetry of the prayer halls which its shape seems as the iwan and
the arcade in the same time and goes around the central court yard, the only difference we can
see is the position of the entrance mass that its shifted in Al-Jaqmaqyah School from the middle
of the main façade to its west side, the reason of this shifting is that the main facade looks out a
narrow street, but the west front looks out to a spacious square that make the entrance more noticeable in this position than being in the central of the façade because of its height according to
the narrow street.
The complex buildings outside the walls: the most important samples are the mosques of Senjekdar and Al-Tawrizy Figure10, the schools of Sabounya Figure 9 and Saybaeya Figure 11. AlTawrizy Mosque was built in a residential street in the west of Old Damascus, the first function
of it was to be a mausoleum only, then it had been decided to complete the building to be a
mosque after several years, so we can find a strange design that the mausoleum located in the
middle of the north façade adjoin to a small court yard, with two entrances the main one locate
in the west of the northern facade opened directly to a transverse arcade used to be an open
court yard in the original design, but the main impact of the site of this building on the interior
spaces distribution was that there is no place for the minaret, this case caused to put it in the opposite side of the street. We can note here the transverse expended of the arcades according to
the space available, where the main axes run from east to west, on the contrary of the previous
samples of the iwans plan.
The Sabounya School axes goes from east to west, and we see the same expansion in the Saybaeya School.
In the all previous samples there is an transverse passage goes from the east to the west, divided the plan into northern part contain the mausoleum and another room, in addition to southern part contains the prayer hall with some multiparous rooms. This passage end to a central
open court yard surrounded with four iwans or iwans and arcades. This plan used in the schools
outside the walls along the Pilgrimage rout where there is no enough place to use the iwans
plan, and where the building need to present the dome to the street as Sabounya School, Saybaeya School and Senjekdar, because the main function of these buildings were school so there
were no reason to put the dome in the main axes of the building as the mosques of arcaded plan.
It became popular in Damascus to build the minaret above the main entrance in this period, to
reflect the continuing escalation of the entrance to the sky. That makes it close to the dome of
the mausoleum in the most of the positions when the main façade is not that long. But when the
facade expanded very long like the Saybaeya and Sabounya Schools they put the minaret in another side of it to achieve the balance.
When compare the position of the mausoleum to the plan we see that in the case of the iwan
plan that the mausoleum put in a place separated from the mass of the iwans not in the corners
between them, but in the complex plans the mausoleum be a part of the entire form of the building plan.
Findings and Recommendations:
- The urban planning of the old city of Damascus was a result of the political and religious
thoughts of the Mamluk rulers, which was explained previously.
- In the same time this distribution of the religious buildings led to emergence new residential regions like Saroja.
- The impacts of the political and religious beliefs on the distribution of the religious buildings affected the interior architecture of these buildings in several aspects which are;
choosing an appropriate plan and style for the interior spaces, and find an alternative design to the interior spaces, so the interior architecture had flexibility to change the original designs of the religious buildings according to the construction site.
- The comparative study between the description of the buildings in the historical books
and the field study nowadays showed that the renovation of the ancient building in Damascus was not at the required level, that they did not use suitable materials and right
construction methods that led sometimes to a new building without any aesthetic values.
- The urban Planning Commission in Damascus must make the effort to preserve the ancient buildings in Damascus by appropriate renovation and reconstruction and conserve
that buildings by an appropriate urban planning that keep the buildings not by destroy
them to make new streets as what was happened in the middle of the 20th century by Icho
Shard the French architect who destroy many remains to widen the city.
Number of the building according the the regions
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Figure 1. Diagram shows the number of the religious building according to the regions in
the old city of Damascus and the places surrounded it.
Figure 2. Map of the Religious buildings in Old Damascus and the area surrounded it – the
numbers shown in the map are explained in the following table.
Figure 3. Table shows the sample of the most important buildings in the old city of Damascus
in chronological order
NO.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
Building
Function
Date
Plan
Al- Zaherya
Tinkez
Al-Kremy
Al-Tankezya
Yalbuga
Al-Afridonya
Senjekdar
Manjek 1
Moaayad
Al-Jawzah
Al-Aqsab
Al-Thekafe
Al-Ekhnaeya
Jaqmaqyah
Al-Tawrizy
Al-Ward
Hesham
Manjek 2
Belban
Shazebkya
Al- Moaalaq
Sabounya
Al- Qaley
Saybaeya
School
Mosque
Mosque
School
Mosque
School
School
Mosque
Mosque
Mosque
Mosque
Mosque
School
School
Mosque
Mosque
Mosque
Mosque
Mosque
School
Mosque
School
Mosque
School
676HA/1277AD
718HA/1318AD
718HA/1318AD
739HA
747HA/1347AD
749HA/1348AD
749HA/1348AD
763HA/
802HA/1399AD
1401HA/804
811HA/1411AD
811HA/1411AD
820HA/1417AD
824HA/1422AD
825HA
830HA/1426AD
831HA/1427AD
835HA
840HA/1441AD
857HA
860HA
1457AD
Late9th century
921ha/1415ad
Complex
Arcades
Arcades
Iwan
Arcades
Iwan
Complex
Arcades
Arcades
Arcades
Arcades
Complex
Complex
Complex
Complex
Arcades
Arcades
Iwan
Complex
Complex
Complex
Site
North Umayyad mosq.
West the old city
Pilgrimage rout
South the citadel
West the old city
Pilgrimage rout
Pilgrimage rout
Pilgrimage rout
North the walls
Sook Sarouja
Sook Sarouja
East of the walls
North Umayyad mosq.
North Umayyad mosq.
West the old city
Sook Sarouja
The Straight street
Pilgrimage rout
Sook Sarouja
West the old city
North the walls
Pilgrimage rout
The Straight street
Pilgrimage rout
Main entrance
West
South..
East-west
North
E-W-N
East
East
East- north
west
East-west
North
West
North
North
North
South
South, north
South
East
North
East
East
Figure 4. Al-Jaqmaqyah School plan
Figure 6. Al- Shazebkya School plan
Figure 9. Sabounya plan
Figure 5. Al-Ekhnaeya School plan
Figure 7. Afridonya School plan
Figure 10. Al-Tawrizy plan
Figure 8. Al- Tankezya plan
Figure 11. Saybaeya plan
‫‪The Resources:‬‬
‫‬‫‬‫‬‫‬‫‪-‬‬
‫أسعد محمد طلس‪ :‬ذيل ثمار المقاصد في ذكر المساجد‪ .‬تأليف‪ :‬يوسف بن عبد الهادي‪ .‬المعهد الفرنسي بدمشق‪ ،‬مجموعة‬
‫النصوص الشرقية‪ ،‬ج‪ ،3‬بيروت‪3493 ،‬م‪.‬‬
‫جان سوفاجيه‪ :‬دمشق الشام‪ ،‬لمحة تاريخية منذ العصور القديمة حتى عهد اإلنتداب‪ .‬ترجمة‪ :‬فؤاد أفرام البستاني‪ ،‬تحقيق‪ :‬أكرم‬
‫العلبي‪ ،‬دمشق‪ ،‬ط‪3494 ،3‬م‪.‬‬
‫عبد القادر بن محمد النعيمي الدمشقي(ت‪479‬هـ)‪ :‬الدارس في تاريخ المدارس‪ .‬إعداد‪ :‬ابراهيم شمس الدين‪ ،‬دار الكتب العلمية‪،‬‬
‫بيروت‪ ،‬لبنان‪ ،‬ط‪3441 ،3‬م‪.‬‬
‫دوروتيه‪ ،‬زاك‪ :‬تطور وبنيان مدينة مشرقية إسالمية‪ .‬ترجمة‪ :‬قاسم طوير‪ ،‬المعهد الفرنسي للشرق األدنى‪ ،‬معهد اآلثار األلماني‪،‬‬
‫دمشق‪5112 ،‬م‪.‬‬
‫كارل ولتسينجر وكارل واتسينجر‪ :‬اآلثار اإلسالمية في مدينة دمشق‪ .‬ترجمة‪ :‬قاسم طوير‪ ،‬تعليق‪ :‬عبد القادر الريحاوي‪ ،‬معهد‬
‫األثار اإلسالمية‪ ،‬دمشق‪ ،‬سوريا‪.‬‬
‫‪Flood, F.B. 1997. “Umayyad Survivals and Mamluk Revivals: Qalawunid Architecture‬‬
‫‪and the Great Mosque of Damascus”. In Muqarnas XIV: An Annual on the Culture of the‬‬
‫‪Islamic World. Gulru Necipoglu (ed). Leiden: E.J. Brill.‬‬
‫‪-‬‬
‫‪Howayda Al-Harthy: “The Concept of Spacein Mamluk Architecture” American Univer‬‬‫‪sity of Bierut,Bierut, Lebanon.‬‬
‫‪-‬‬
‫‪Nasser Rabat: “Mamluk History through Architecture, Monuments, Culture and Politics‬‬
‫‪in Medieval Egypt and Syria” London: I.B. Tauris, 2010, Library of Middle East History:‬‬
‫‪v. 21.‬‬
‫‪-‬‬