Hammam al-Ward

A bath house in the Mamluk core of Souq Sarouja. It stands behind the Barsbay Mosque, inside the old fabric of the quarter, and records carry it as the historic Hammam al-Ward. Four bath houses were counted in this quarter in the 15th century, and this is the one whose name comes up most.

Getting there

Walk north out of the walled city into Souq Sarouja. The mosque is the landmark: find the Barsbay Mosque and go round the back of it. The mosque is also known as the Ward Mosque, so either name works when you ask.

Who built it

Arabic sources give the founder of the bath as the emir Sarim al-Din Saruja, who died in 743 of the Islamic calendar, that is 1342, and who gave the quarter its name. The mosque behind which it stands is later: it was built by the Mamluk emir Barsbay al-Nasiri, deputy governor of Aleppo and Tripoli, in 830 of the Islamic calendar, that is 1426. The mosque came after the bath, and came to sit beside it.

What condition it is in

There is no honest way to state this flatly. Souq Sarouja went through a large fire in July 2023 and part of the quarter was damaged; the present state of the bath cannot be confirmed from a distance. Whether it works, and whether the door is open, is something to ask in the quarter. Inventing an opening time or a price would be worse than leaving both blank.

Don’t miss

How the mosque and the bath share one plan. A hammam in Damascus was never built on its own: its water, its furnace and its custom belonged to an endowment, and the mosque was the visible face of that endowment. Walking round the back of the Barsbay Mosque, look at how short the distance between the two is.