Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi Mosque and Tomb

A mosque in Salihiyya, the quarter on the slopes above Damascus, standing on the street named after the man buried inside: Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi, a Damascene Sufi, jurist, poet and traveller who died in 1731. He was buried under a dome he had built in his own house, and the mosque rose over the grave later. Sources say little about the building and a great deal about the man, and this page follows that balance.

Where it is

In the Abu Jarash district of Salihiyya, on Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi Street. According to its OpenStreetMap entry it is a few hundred metres from the Hanabila Mosque. Opposite stands the Shaykh Ibrahim al-Nabulsi Mosque, whose address Arabic Wikipedia gives as “opposite the Shaykh Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi complex”. The Al-Sahiba Madrasa is in the streets around it too.

Who was Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulsi

He was born in Damascus in 1641. His father died when he was twelve. At twenty he began teaching in the Umayyad Mosque. At twenty-five he went to Edirne and Istanbul, took a judgeship in the Midan quarter of Damascus, then gave it up to return to teaching and writing. At forty he went through a severe crisis and for seven years barely left his house, though he kept receiving students and kept writing. Before this seclusion he is said to have been pelted with stones for defending the ideas of Ibn Arabi, the 13th-century mystic; afterwards his standing grew. He then travelled to Lebanon, Jerusalem, Egypt and the Hijaz and turned each journey into a book. His ode on Jerusalem, “Salam ala al-Ikhwan fi Hadrat al-Quds”, is among his best-known poems. He left more than three hundred works.

What he defended

Al-Nabulsi openly defended things that some jurists of his day banned: the Mevlevi ritual dance, gatherings with musical instruments, coffee and tobacco. His treatise arguing that smoking is lawful is remembered as an influential text in the tobacco debate of the Ottoman Middle East. When the mufti of Damascus died in 1723, the governor appointed al-Nabulsi to the post. One of his own students came back from Istanbul with a decree and took the office formally, so al-Nabulsi served six months. Arabic Wikipedia says the register of his rulings from those six months survives in manuscript at the National Library in Damascus.

The grave and the mosque

In 1707 he moved from his house near the Umayyad Mosque to Salihiyya, where he went on teaching Ibn Arabi’s Meccan Revelations. He died in 1731 and was buried under the dome he had built in his house. His biographer al-Muradi writes that the city shut on the day he died and people poured into Salihiyya for the funeral. There are two accounts of when the mosque was founded. Lists of Damascus mosques give 1733. The Arabic Wikipedia entry on al-Nabulsi says it was built over the grave early in the 13th century AH, that is, in the last years of the 18th century. We found no source that reconciles the two.

Visiting and how long it takes

It is a working neighbourhood mosque. The most recent dated trace we have is its OpenStreetMap entry, added in 2022; opening arrangements, and whether the tomb chamber can be entered, are things to ask on the spot. Visiting outside prayer times makes it easier. Twenty minutes is enough to stand at the grave and leave.

Don’t miss

The link with the Darwish Pasha Mosque. For generations the Nabulsi family taught at, and managed the endowment of, the mosque that the Ottoman governor Darwish Pasha built in the old city: first his great-grandfather Isma’il, then his grandfather, then his father. The tiled doorway on Straight Street and this grave in Salihiyya are the two ends of one family.