The building appears much as it did originally, except, of course, that the stone is darker—new buildings always stood out because of the freshness of their stone. Its grounds must have been somewhat more pleasant, and it was probably located outside the cemetery proper in order to obtain a larger site. Such a site would have to have been secured, surely by an earlier enclosure wall. Perhaps there was a family burial ground here, of which the present tomb is the only remnant; this might help explain its lack of inscription.
The exterior is opened by large arches in each side, one of which is now blocked. The dome is articulated in two twelve-sided zones of transition on the exterior. The lower one is windowless. The upper zone of transition has windows at the four cardinal points. The dome is gored.
The building does not belong to the usual type of Damascus turbās. The lower part, a tetrapylon, displays excellent masonry. Within, a dodecagon is produced by pendentives that are a cross between the spherical and the pyramidal. From it springs a muqarnaṣ vault in large masonry blocks that are plaster coated. It has two zones of very large alveoli and brackets and a large conch, the section of which is more than a half circle. All the units of this vault are richly decorated in stucco.
Turbat ibn al-Muqaddam contains the first full stone muqarnaṣ dome in Damascus, and it shows the Damascene style of interior decoration in relief stucco at its most decorative.
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Ernst Herzfeld. Damascus, Studies in Architecture I. Ars islamica v. 9, University of Michigan Press, 1942.
Terry Allen. Ayyubid Architecture. Solipsist Press, Occidental, California, 1999.
Ǧamāl Kibrīt. Ibn 'l Mukaddam (Cemetery). Syrian Encyclopedia of Archaeology.
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