The Al-Khanqiyya Madrasa
A Mamluk madrasa in Midan, outside the walls: its west door opens on the main street, a wooden ceiling replaced the dome, and a kuttab sits to the north.
- Opening hours
- Open at prayer times — check at the door
- Entry
- Free
- Duration
- 20 minutes
- Best time
- Midday, when light drops straight through the lantern
- Period
- Mamluk
- Address
- Midan street, south of the walls, Damascus
Outside the southern walls of Damascus, in Midan. Its west door opens onto the main Midan street, and the stone plaque on the corner reads “Al-Khanqiyya Mosque”. The building is Mamluk, and inside it is made of three spaces: a large central hall, a southern hall used as a mosque, and to the north a kuttab, a school for children.
A warning about its date
No firm date has been published for this building; all anyone has is “Mamluk period”. The dates 1317 and 1382 that come up in a search do not belong here: they belong to the Khanqiyya madrasas of the same name in Cairo and Jerusalem, and the sources run all three together. What identifies the Damascus Khanqiyya is not a date but a position — just north of the mosque and mausoleum of Amir Tanbak, on the Midan street.
What to see
The entrance is on the west side, framed in black stone, with a carved wooden door. It takes you straight into the wide central hall. The hall once held a large water basin and a dome over it; a wooden ceiling now stands where the dome was. The walls are limestone, and windows and wooden doors between them lead to the ablution room and the kuttab hall.
The mosque connects to the central hall by a large stone arch and runs in four bays. Some carry wooden ceilings, and the domes of others were taken down later. The photograph on this page is the inside of the mosque: the vault over the bays, a wooden octagonal lantern at its centre, and book niches low in the walls.
Don’t miss
The lantern. Octagonal, wooden, set in the middle of the vault, and all the light in the mosque comes through it; it is the answer to the dome that was removed. If you want to read how a building changes under repair in a single detail, that is the detail.
How long it takes
20 minutes, and not on its own. The mosque and mausoleum of Amir Tanbak stand just to the south, and the two fall next to each other as you walk the Midan street. Midan was where the pilgrim road left Damascus, and the buildings along the street were lined up beside that road.
Tips
- The door is on the Midan street; the stone plaque on the corner is the only sign outside
- Look at the wooden ceiling of the central hall — it took the dome's place
- The mosque and mausoleum of Tanbak are a few hundred paces south; put the two on one walk
Transparency
- How this was chosen
- Written by hand; opening hours, entry fee and coordinates are kept as data. A field that is not known for certain is marked as variable rather than guessed.
- Facts checked
- September 2026
- Last updated
- September 15, 2026