The Al-Shu’aybiyya Mosque

Turn right immediately after the Antioch Gate and a single facade stands on its own. The madrasa behind it is gone; what is left is the portal, a squat minaret and a fountain opening onto the street. It is one of the few places in Aleppo where a fragment is far more interesting than the whole would have been.

Getting there

Come in through the Antioch Gate; the mosque is a few paces along, on the north side of the market lane. A plaque above the door carries the name, and it is hard to miss.

What to see

The stone cornice crowning the facade looks lifted from a classical building: dentils, egg-and-dart, brackets. Almost nothing in Islamic architecture is arranged this way. A band of Kufic script runs directly beneath it.

What not to miss

The ground itself. Tradition holds that when Aleppo was taken in 637 the first Muslim prayer in the city was said here, just inside the gate. What you see now survives from 1150, when Nur al-Din turned the site into a madrasa; the name comes from Shaykh Shu’ayb, the Andalusi jurist who headed it.

How long it takes

Fifteen minutes is enough, because there is almost no interior left to enter. Cross to the far pavement and read the cornice from top to bottom; that is where the work is.