The Khusrawiyya Mosque, Aleppo

It stood south-west of the Aleppo citadel, just across the road that rings the mound. Khusrev Pasha, the Ottoman governor of Aleppo, commissioned it in 1546, the court architect Sinan drew the plan, and it became the first madrasa built in the city under Ottoman rule. It was destroyed with explosives in August 2014. Everyone walking the citadel circuit still passes the spot, but there is no mosque to see.

What is on the site

The complex occupied the south-western arc of the citadel ring road, on the corner that drops towards the Saffahiyya quarter. The plot is there and so is the rubble. This side of the Old City is under repair and the streets change from month to month; how close you can get, you will find out on the spot.

What was lost

The prayer hall was a square room 16 metres to a side. The dome above it stood 21 metres high and carried the names of God around its interior. In front of the hall ran a portico of six domes, and a slender round minaret rose at the south-west corner, its upper shaft wrapped in a band of tilework. The mihrab was cut in coloured marble. Besides the madrasa the complex held rooms for travellers, a public kitchen and shops.

The building’s later life

The madrasa was badly damaged in the Aleppo earthquake of 1822 and left untended for a long stretch; the repairs were taken on by governor Jamil Pasha and by the city’s endowment administration. Through the First World War it served, like Aleppo’s other large buildings, as barracks and an ammunition store, and it reopened in 1340 AH. When the city’s religious schools were merged in 1959 it took the name of the Shariah secondary school and was known by it until the end.

Don’t miss

Look at old photographs taken from the citadel. If you see one large dome south-west of the mound with a thin minaret beside it, that is the Khusrawiyya. There is a gap in that corner of the skyline now, and nothing explains the change faster.