The Al-Jaharkasiyya Madrasa

In Salihiyya, right beside the Jami al-Jadid. It was founded by Fakhr al-Din Jaharkas, a Circassian Ayyubid emir who commanded Saladin’s mamluk troops and died in 1211. A former mamluk named Khutluba later enlarged the building for his own burial, which is why two tomb chambers stand linked together today.

Getting there

Towards the southern end of the street of madrasas, a few minutes below the Atabakiyya and the Murshidiyya. Find the door of the Jami al-Jadid and you have found this too: the two sit side by side, twenty paces apart at most. The street is narrow, so the domes only come into view once you step back.

What to see

What you see from the street are the domes. Two of them, side by side on octagonal drums, each face of a drum pierced by an arched window; the dome shells are painted a tile red and the drums are white. The wall below is large dressed stone, the storey above it rendered. A passage links the two tomb chambers, and a separate prayer hall stands to the west. The interior is not regularly open.

How long it takes

Fifteen minutes. This stop belongs to a street walk; it is not a place to travel to on its own, and saying so is the honest thing. It works well as the last link of a walk that starts at the Sahibiyya and comes down southward.

Don’t miss

The Arabic Wikipedia entry on the street of madrasas notes that most of its colleges turned into houses or mosques, and counts the Jaharkasiyya among them. That is the thing to watch for as you walk: which door still looks like the door of a madrasa, and which has become the entrance to a block of flats. Here the answer sits in the domes — the building changed its work, but the burial chambers stayed as they were.