The Al-Shamiyah al-Kubra Madrasa

In Souq Saruja, about 200 metres north-west of the old city. Fatima Khatun, daughter of Najm al-Din Ayyub and sister of Saladin, founded it between 1187 and 1191. Her charity earned her the name Sitt al-Sham, the Lady of Damascus; the name passed to the quarter, and the building is now called the Sitt al-Sham Mosque.

Getting there

On the corner of the road that runs from Thawra Street up to the Victoria Bridge, where Shukri al-Quwatli Street meets it. Everything around it is modern: tower blocks, signage, traffic. Take the stone minaret as your marker — it shows from the end of the street and looks like nothing else near it.

What to see

The courtyard is rectangular and wide, with a stone basin at its centre. A portico on stone piers runs in front of the prayer hall. In the eastern corner rises a large, undecorated Ayyubid stone minaret, carrying a square wooden balcony under a wooden canopy, with a bulbous finial at the top. The tomb chamber holds three graves: Sitt al-Sham, her son Husam al-Din who was killed at Hattin, and her husband and cousin Nasir al-Din Muhammad ibn Shirkuh. The body of her elder brother Shams al-Dawla Turanshah was also brought here from Alexandria.

How long it takes

Half an hour. The building works as a mosque, so it is open at prayer times; whether women may enter and sit in the courtyard depends on the arrangement of the day. With the garden beside it this counts as a place to sit, and in the midday heat it is one of the few patches of shade in Souq Saruja.

Don’t miss

One condition of its endowment was that its teacher should hold no chair at any other madrasa. Scholars of the period commonly held several posts at once, and Sitt al-Sham forbade it outright. This was among the most heavily endowed colleges in Damascus, and Ibn al-Salah gave the first lessons in it. Shams al-Din al-A’raj and Shams al-Din al-Maqdisi taught from the same chair after him.