Mausoleum of Sultan Baybars (al-Madrasa al-Zahiriyya)

Baybars, the Mamluk sultan of Egypt and Syria from 1260, died in Damascus on 1 July 1277; Britannica reports that he drank a cup of poison meant for someone else⁵. He had asked to be buried in the village of Daraya near Damascus, but his son and successor al-Malik al-Sa'id Baraka Khan chose the neighbourhood of the Umayyad Mosque, where earlier rulers lay². Work on a domed tomb chamber began in 676 AH (1277), almost opposite the Ayyubid Madrasa al-'Adiliyya, and a house on the site was converted into the madrasa attached to it^2,6. The building inscription carries the signature of the architect, Ibrahim ibn Ghana'im al-Muhandis².

Baraka Khan’s reign ended in 1279, and Sultan Qalawun completed the work². The portal inscription dates the interior decoration to 680 AH (1281), and a later inscription added by Qalawun refers to Baraka Khan’s funeral in the same year². Its glass mosaics and carved vine frieze resemble those in Qalawun’s own mausoleum in Cairo, which suggests that the same workshop was employed². In 1876 the building became a public library; with the 'Adiliyya opposite, it housed al-Majma' al-'Ilmi al-'Arabi, a leading institution of Syria’s literary revival⁴. UNESCO inscribed the walled city around it in 1979 and placed it on the List of World Heritage in Danger in 2013¹.

The tomb chamber (qubba) is square, 13.52 m a side, and built of smooth, finely fitted limestone blocks². Two octagonal drums carry its red-painted dome: the upper drum has a pair of pointed-arch windows on every side, the lower one on alternate sides². High on the outer wall, a round window is framed by shallow carved interlace and two four-lobed cartouches².

The complex is entered from the street through a portal niche 4.0 m wide, with three lines of inscription and a muqarnas hood that ends in a fluted, shell-shaped half-dome². The portal leads into a courtyard; the entrance to the tomb chamber, which occupies the south-west corner of the building, is on the right^2,6. IRCICA’s inventory calls the building one of the largest and best-preserved madrasas of Damascus⁴.

The walls of the tomb chamber are faced to a height of 3 m with inlaid marble panels, topped by a floral relief border and a carved vine frieze². Above them runs a band of glass mosaic 1.5 m high on three of the four walls, showing trees, vases and buildings in a landscape that recalls the mosaics of the Umayyad Mosque^2,3. The mihrab of the tomb chamber is of coloured marble⁶. Baybars was buried under the dome⁵.