The Sharaf Mosque, Aleppo

Jdayde is remembered for its churches, its merchant houses and Al-Hatab Square. Its Muslim building is this mosque, standing among the shop lanes of the Abd al-Hayy quarter, and from the street you see the minaret first.

When it was built

What stands today came out of a thorough rebuild under the Mamluk sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri, between 1500 and 1517; the inscription above the entrance records the work. The mosque was not founded then, though: gravestones of 1393 in the courtyard show that a religious building already stood here at the end of the 14th century.

Where the name comes from

The name is thought to come from Hajji Sharaf ibn Baba Faraj. There is no firm record of it, but the building and the corner both go by that name.

Getting there

Walk north from Al-Hatab Square; the lane towards Abd al-Hayy takes you past the front of the mosque. A few minutes from the square.

How long it takes

Twenty minutes. The mosque is small and its street front is tangled with shops; what you came for is the minaret and the domed prayer hall.

What to see

Two pieces survive from the Mamluk work: the minaret and the domed prayer hall. The minaret is stone, slender, and rises alone above the roofs. Next to the mosque stands a kastal of 1491 — a public fountain feeding the street.

Don’t miss

The inscription on the fountain. It ties the kastal to a slave merchant named Burdbek, the same man who founded the Kastal al-Harami Mosque elsewhere in Aleppo. One fountain text lays out the trading network of Mamluk Aleppo in a single line.

How it stands now

The mosque still serves its quarter. Its war damage is measured in its own section of the Aleppo Heritage Catalogue, the record kept by the Museum für Islamische Kunst in Berlin. This page carries no coordinates: only one independent source places the building, and a wrong pin is worse than none.