Dār al-Fuqarāʾ

 

The door in the attached figure of Dār al-Fuqarāʾ could easily be mistaken for an antique work. The drawing is of 1914. Herzfeld returned in 1930 to check the position of the inscription and to take a photograph but could not locate it, the region outside the north gate of the Great Mosque having been completely rebuilt. Since the Monuments historiques de Damas ignore the building and the Répertoire (1) quotes the inscription (No. 2619) from the old recueil Schefer only, the German orientalist assumed it no longer exists; van Berchem read it in 1893, then Herzfeld in 1914.    

Good Kūfī, 130 by 20 cm, either on the lintel or on the discharging arch above:

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم هذه الدار السفل وقف

على الفقراء المجرّدين من الصوفيّة أثاب الله من وقفها

In the name of Allah, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful. The ground floor of this house is a waqf
for the poor (faqīr), the destitute of the Ṣūfīs. Allah reward him who founded it!

“Abu al-Qāsim ʿAlī ...  al-Sumaysāṭī (2), astronomer and mathematician, died on the 10th Rabīʿ II, 453 (3), at Damascus and was buried in his house near Bāb al-Nāṭifīyyīn (4), which he had founded as waqf for Ṣūfī pilgrims. (5)

At the time of Tutuš (Malikšāhʾs brother), the Sumaysāṭīyyā was connected by a door with the northern arcade of the Great Mosque.

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1. Répertoire Chronologique d'Épigraphie Arabe (RCEA). 

2. From Samosata on the upper Euphrates.

3. May 4, 1061 CE. 

4. North gate of the Great Mosque.

5. An-Nuʿaymī p 118. 

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Ernst Herzfeld. Damascus, Studies in Architecture II. Ars Islamica X 1943 (p. 13-70).