Madrasa aš-Šāmīyyā: the Tomb Chamber

 

The tomb chamber is a square of 9.6 m., with recesses 11.4 by 12.7 m., covered by a slightly pointed cross vault, about 7.6 m. high at the summit. It springs from a low dado only 1.2 m. from the floor. The low beginning of the vault gives the room, though it is wide and not low, the appearance of a crypt. I do not remember another mausoleum of the period where the problem of space has been treated in this way.

The walls and the vaults are divided into panels in stucco work. All the framing lines are flat moldings and are accompanied, including the groins of the vault, by capricious lines, variations of a broken arch on brackets, which may be classed among “cuspidated moldings.” One can simply state that they are derived from the special style dominating the Ǧazīrā during the two preceding centuries.

The arch of the miḥrāb and a few roundels now badly whitewashed, also the fragment of a frieze on the north wall, of which a drawing is given in Monuments historiques (number 26), show a more elaborate arabesque in stucco. 

Ernst Herzfeld. Damascus, Studies in Architecture III. Ars Islamica XI-XII 1946 (p. 1-71).