The portal is fully ablaq, except for its muqarnaṣ vault; it displays doubled colonettes at the outer corners of the entry bay and has two rather high stone benches, convenient now for patrons of a nearby bakery, who cool hot bread there as they arrange it in stacks to carry home. The doubled colonettes of the portal and the single remaining capital are spolia; the columns are presumably antique, and the capitals may be the work of the Crusaders. The vault is set behind a deep enframing frontal arch, which is characteristic of Aleppan architecture; it has a wide and low profile. The shapes of the joggled voussoirs under the vault and the use of ablaq in a pointed arch of joggled voussoirs are Damascene devices; so are the inscription on a monolithic lintel and the use of corner colonettes.
In this portal the traditional full ablaq portal design is realized for the first time: black and yellow coursing is employed exclusively, and structurally pointless pseudovoussoirs are used, mimicking the elaborate joggling earlier generations had used for flat arches, such as lintels.
In detail, this portal goes beyond the norm of the older buildings and leans visibly toward the early Mamlūk style, as represented in Damascus by the turbā library of Baybars. The two-colored frontal arch framing the vault is a feature that stands on the line dividing Ayyūbīd and Mamlūk architecture.
Ernst Herzfeld. Damascus, Studies in Architecture III. Ars Islamica XI-XII 1946 (p. 1-71).
Terry Allen. Ayyubid Arhitecture. Solipsist Press, Occidental, California, 1999.
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