Al-Firdaws mosque-madrasa

The al-Firdaws madrasa (of Paradise) is situated to the south-west of Aleppo, near the Gates of the Gardens. It was founded by Dayfat Khatun, daughter-in-law of Saladin[2], regent of the Aleppo region in the middle of the thirteenth century.

A chronicle of the thirteenth century[3] details its various functions: it contained tombs, a madrasa, a Sufi residence, a mosque and functioned thanks to an endowment (waqf) from the princess.

The entire façade with its austere, compact appearance of large masonry blocks is decorated with a long inscription referring to Paradise, to the founder and to the intendant of works ‘Abd al-Muhsin al-‘Azizi al-Nasiri.  A portal with a muqarnas niche, modelled on the portal of the Nur al-Din Zangi Hospital (Damascus, 1154), occupies the east façade. An angled corridor leads to a paved courtyard with an octagonal lobed pool.

An arcade surrounds the courtyard on three sides. Its arches rest on columns of which ten have muqarnas capitals, some of the earliest such examples in Islamic architecture. The two capitals closest to the north iwan are decorated with olive braches[4]. Around the arcade a long poetic inscription celebrates Sufism, a mystical movement embodied in Aleppo by Suhrawardi [5].

Behind the arcade are groups of three domed halls. This arrangement, present in the Zahiriya madrasa[6], recalls reception rooms in Ayyubid private architecture[7]. The joint presence of the arcade encircling the courtyard and the domed halls possibly prefigures Ottoman architecture of the sixteenth century. The north-east and north-west corners are occupied by two areas separated from the side iwans by two vaulted passages. Several rooms encircle the central courtyard to the side iwan, as in private Syrian homes[8].

The mosque occupies the south hall. The dome in front of the mihrab rests on a drum with muqarnas squinch and twelve openings. Signed Hassan ibn Annan, it is the only Ayyubid mihrab which uses four colours of marble veneers and constitutes a superb example of the ablaq technique. The appreciation of coloured stones originated in the Umeyyad period[9], and was inherited from classical and Byzantine practice. It was frequently used in the Mamluk period in Egypt and Syria but also in Italy in the Quattrocento[10] and in the sixteenth century in Ottoman architecture. The koranic inscription in naskhi script fills the upper arcature. The mihrab niche is supported by granite columns with muqarnas capitals reused from another architectural source.

Two domed square halls flank the mosque which contains several tombs. It was perhaps intended to hold the sepulchres of the founder and her entourage.

The north iwan was intended for teaching. Each wall is carved with three niches to hold books. The upper part is filled by a part of the poetic inscription encircling the courtyard.

The original presence of the second iwan back to back with the north iwan raises questions about the use of this area. According to literary sources, it may have opened onto a garden which contained a pool[11]. The position of the iwans and the importance of water are a constant in palace architecture, a legacy of Sasanian Iran[12], for example, the Bulkawara palace (Samarra, ninth century), the Ghaznavid palace of Lashkari Bazar (Bust, eleventh century) and the pavilion of the Artuqid garden of Mardin (Turkey middle of thirteenth century)[13]. Its original presence in the Mustansiriya madrasa of Baghdad (1233) is noteworthy. A hypothesis has been posited for the function of this double iwan[14]: the iwan by the courtyard being south- facing would have been impractical in high temperatures; teaching would then have taken place in the north-facing iwan, opposite the garden with basin.

[3] Ibn Shaddad, Al A ‘laq al khatirat fi dhikr umara’ ash sham wal jazirat, 1274.

[4] For a comprehensive study of these capitals and their association with the mystical symbolism of the building and, in particular, the Verse on Light from the Koran (24:35) see Hammad, M., 2003, p.11.

[5] This poetic inscription recalls the Sufism movement (Islamic mysticism) and probably Suhrawardi, the celebrated Sufi from Aleppo, condemned to death 1191 for heresy, after he developed the theory of illumination (Ishraq) in which unity with the divinity is attained through contact with light.

[6] Aleppo, 1219. Photo in Ettinghausen et Grabar, p.306

[7] Plan of Matbakh al-‘Ajami, Aleppo, C12th. Photo du plan in l’Orient de Saladin, p.77.

[8] Cf note n°7.

[9] Great Mosque of Damascus, 706-712

[10] Santa Maria dei Fiore, Florence, Italy, 1296

[11] According to Sibt ibn al-‘Ajami (d. 1479), Les trésors d’or, ed. Jean Sauvaget, Beyrouth, Institut français de Damas, 1950, p.80.

[12] The Arch of Ctesiphon and the iwan of Taq-i-Bustan constitute the prototypes of this type of decoration.

[13] This building called ‘paradise’ was the only remains of a group of garden pavilions built between 1240 and 1260 to the east of Mardin (Turkey).

[14] Cf. Hammad, M., 2003, pp. 12-13