The Al-Daqqaq Mosque

A Mamluk mosque in the Midan quarter of Damascus, on the east side of the main street that once carried pilgrims south to Mecca. The judge Karim al-Din Abd al-Karim ibn Hibat Allah ibn al-Sadid al-Misri founded it in 1318, and the building took a year. It answers to three names — al-Daqqaq, al-Karimi after its founder, and al-Qubaybat after the stretch of Midan it stands in.

Getting there

On the main Midan street, opposite Hammam al-Darb. Shops fill the whole west front, so it is easy to walk past without seeing it. One door opens at the north end of that front. The main entrance sits inside an alley running off the main street at a right angle. There is also an east door, wooden, under a projecting wooden hood.

How long it takes

Half an hour is enough. The courtyard is small and quiet outside prayer times.

What to see

The courtyard floor is laid in zigzag bands of black, yellow and white stone, and two low domes sit over the north portico. The spandrels above the portico arches are painted: scrolling foliage on a green ground with bands of Quranic script. On the south side the mihrab block projects and divides the facade down the middle; that wall carries four windows in the lower row and fourteen above.

Don’t miss

The minaret rises behind the middle of the north portico and can be seen properly from nowhere but the courtyard. The founder bought a watercourse and brought it here, and built a large basin beside the mosque for people and animals to drink from. The water no longer runs, but that channel explains why the mosque stands on this exact spot in Midan.

Its condition today

The Awqaf directorate renewed the mosque in 1931, and the courtyard, the porticoes and the north face of the historic prayer hall were repaired around 2006 and 2007. It is in use.