The Al-Turantaiyah Madrasa, Aleppo

It stands outside the walls of Aleppo, east of Bab al-Nayrab. Two things set it apart from the other colleges of the city: where it is, and how big it is. The sources describe it less as a school than as a small fort. The other thing is who paid for it — this was the endowment of Ibn al-Adim, the historian of Aleppo.

Who built it

There are two answers, and both are on record. Ibn al-Adim began the work in 1241 and finished it in 1251, and its first name was al-Kamaliyya al-Adimiyya. After Hulagu destroyed Aleppo in 1260, the madrasa was renewed. The plaque beside the door, however, names Afif al-Din bin Muhammad Shams al-Din as founder and gives the date 1383. The name it carries today came later still: in the 14th century it began to be called after the Mamluk emir Turantay, and it became the zawiya of Shaykh Muhyi al-Din al-Badinjki and his successors.

What to see

You see the door first: a muqarnas hood, a geometric stone grille beneath it, and courses of black and white stone flanking the opening. The building has two storeys. 40 cells are counted in the east wing, upper and lower together; the prayer hall is on the south, and a wide iwan on the north was later closed with a wall. An underground cistern fed from the canal sits in the middle of the courtyard. A small minaret rises at the north-east corner, and a portico on slender high columns runs along the west side.

How long it takes

Half an hour. The building works as a mosque and a school at once, so the door is open around prayer times. The Bab al-Nayrab line is the eastern side of Aleppo, where few travellers go. Get directions before you set out; street names are patchy on the map.

Don’t miss

The row of cells. 40 of them run through two floors of the east wing, and nothing in the small colleges inside the walls is built at that scale. Out here there was room, and a school could be laid out as a school.