The entrance of the maristân of Nûr al-Dîn Zangî

The entrance to the building consists of a large portal with a very incomplete ornamental frame composed of geometric interlacing in which stars and scrolled ovals alternate. The sober and majestic treatment of this motif is characteristic of the high quality of stonemasonry in the region, which is expressed in both Christian and Muslim buildings. The same motif can also be found in the stucco decoration surmounting the mihrâb (horseshoe niche in a mosque indicating the direction of Mecca) in the large mosque at Tinmal  (Morocco, 1154), constructed during this period when the Muslim East had a strong influence in North Africa.

The door was erected by the Damascene overseer Abû al-Fadl Muhammad al-Harithî, a geometer and doctor who worked at the hospital. It is made from a bronze plaque fixed on to a wooden backing with copper nails, arranged in a geometric pattern throughout. The network of hexagonal and star-shaped motifs drawn in this way are decorated with leafy scrolls. This type of ornamentation of the surfaces is characteristic of Islamic art; it can also be found on woodwork[1]. The bronze door knockers were moulded in the shape of twisted acanthus branches which evoke the dragon motif, used widely in Jazirah[2]. An antique tympanum is placed above the door, in re-use.

The soberness of the treatment of the lower part of the door is in contrast to the niche with flattened muqarnas (small pointed niches, stacked in tiers) in the upper part. The joint between the brick vault and the stonemasonry is wooden trellis-work. It is placed over a tier of small columns and multi-lobed niches. Nine tiers of alveolar shape evoking muqarnas are stacked here, crowned with a ribbed half dome. If this type of vaulting was in use in Iraq since the 11th century[3], it appears here for the first time on a portal. It creates a model that will be re-used in Mameluke and Ayyubid architecture as well as in Seljuk Anatolia[4].

The portal leads to a vestibule, the earliest example remaining to us in Syria of a square room with a vault of muqarnas. The profile of the conical dome mirrors the muqarnas of the interior cupola. It is similar to the hospital’s small neighbouring building, Nûr al-Dîn‘s madrasa-mausoleum.  Two lateral niches are covered by a vault of brick muqarnas. Pendentives with muqarnas appear in the upper part of the structure. The main vault sits on a transitional area comprising four squinches with muqarnas, alternated with windows. Eleven tiers of muqarnas are crowned by a dome with eight lobes. This arrangement seems to have come from Iraq: the oldest known example of such a dome is to be found in Samarra at the mausoleum of the Imam Dûr (1085).  Intermediary stages between the Iraqi building and the Nûr al-Dîn hospital probably existed, but there is no remaining example. The choice of an architectural formula of originally Iraqi origin was probably made for a precise reason, when you consider the reign of its sponsor in the political and religious context  of the period, which was caught up in the rivalry between the Shiite Fatimid Caliphate and the Sunni Abbasids from Baghdad.

Many studies have been carried out on the dome with muquarnas. The cupola literally evanesces in the play of light on the different facets of the muqarnas. Researchers have produced various hypotheses to link this phenomenon to the occasionalist concept of the universe, formulated by al-Baqillanî in Baghdad at the beginning of the 11th century, describing a multiform universe composed of multiple accidents combined together in  different ways according to the will of God[5].

[2] Door knocker with lion and dragon , Jazirah, 12th-13thc, bronze, moulded and engraved, Paris, Louvre, inv. MAO97.

[3] Imam Dûr, Iraq, Samarra, 1085.

[4]Portal of the Khuand Khatun Mosque, Anatolia, Kayseri, 1237-1238.

[5] See Tabbaa 1985 on this.