Dār al-Ḥadīṯ an-Nūrīyyā: Foundation Date

 

The building was reduced to two parts, the connecting wings having already been destroyed by fire at the time of van Berchemʾs visit in 1893-94.

Originally, it was nearly square, 16.2 by 17.3 m, around a small court 7 m square with a tank in its center. Only the north wing on the street and the prayer hall in the south remain. The door on the street has a molded frame in good masonry and, above the lintel, a block with an elongated tabula ansata, made to receive an inscription of one or two lines that was never written. The chronicles do not provide the date, which is limited between 549 (1154 CE), the conquest of Damascus, and 569 (1174 CE), the death of Nūr ad-Dīn. The absence of the inscription puts the building at the end of that period. The first ḥāfiẓ (one who knows the whole Koran by heart) that directed the teaching was abu al-Qāsim ʿAlī ibn ʿAsākir, who was born in Muḥarram 499 (September, 1105) and who died in Raǧab 571 (January, 1176).

Ernst Herzfeld. Damascus, Studies in Architecture I. Ars islamica v. 9, University of Michigan Press, 1942. 

Photo credit: Michel Écochard.