آرامگاه صلاح‌الدین

Saladin (Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub) declared the end of the Fatimid caliphate and founded the Ayyubid sultanate in 1171⁶. He died in 1193 and was first buried in the Citadel of Damascus². His son al-Malik al-Afdal Nur al-Din 'Ali, then ruler of Damascus, built a mausoleum for him facing the north wall of the Umayyad Mosque, and the body was moved there on the holy day of 'Ashura in 592 AH (1195)². These events are known from the eyewitness account of Saladin’s confidant 'Imad al-Din al-Isfahani (d. 1201)². Soon afterwards another son, al-Malik al-'Aziz 'Uthman, ruler of Egypt, attached a madrasa to the tomb, the Madrasa al-'Aziziyya².

Blue and green Ottoman tiles of the 17th century were later added to its walls². In November 1898 the German emperor Wilhelm II visited the tomb during a state visit to the Ottoman Empire⁴. A photographer’s caption in the Syrian Heritage Archive Project, Berlin, says the tomb had been badly neglected until Wilhelm had it restored, as an inscription in the chamber records³. A gilt bronze wreath placed on the tomb during that visit was removed in 1918 and given to the Imperial War Museum in London^4,5. UNESCO inscribed the walled city around it in 1979 and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2013¹.

The mausoleum follows the usual Damascene type: a square chamber with ablaq walls, in alternating light and dark stone, and four arches that carry a dome². The transition from the square to the dome is made by a drum in two stages, first octagonal and then sixteen-sided². Little of the original exterior survives, and little remains of the Madrasa al-'Aziziyya that adjoined the tomb².

The domed tomb chamber, in the south-west corner of the building, has walls of striped ablaq stone with blue and green Ottoman tiles of the 17th century². Two cenotaphs stand side by side in the middle². The original Ayyubid one is of wood, carved with geometric, star-shaped, floral and vegetal patterns, and is largely hidden under covers^2,3. Beside it stands a white marble cenotaph of disputed origin^2,3,4. Discover Islamic Art calls it a gift of Wilhelm II on a visit it dates to 1903, and a Syrian Heritage Archive record says he gave it during his journey of 1898^2,3. The historian Jonathan Phillips instead describes a recent Ottoman marble shrine of 1878 that was already in place when the emperor came⁴.