The south side of the prayer hall shows the fine masonry of its walls without coating; it includes a miḥrāb with a round window over it (1). The double quatrefoil around that window is closely connected with the marquetry works of the Aleppo school, all dated between 569 (1173 CE) and 650 (1252 CE) at the latest. This side of the room belongs to the first period of the building, before 634 (1236 CE).
The three other sides are plastered and richly ornamented. Watzinger and Wulzinger (2) and Sauvaget (3) stress, with reason, the Maġrebine character of these ornaments. The decoration was certainly added when Taqīī ad-Dīn was buried in the turbā, which had been bought, an existing building, for Kamāl ad-Dīn in 634. One cannot expect to encounter literary evidence connecting Taqīī ad-Dīn with the Maġrib. But ibn Ǧubayr says that there were many Maġrebines living in Zāwiyat al-Maġāribā (4), an institution richly endowed, and there must have been many of them a hundred years later. The decoration has found no imitation at Damascus and remains an isolated, spontaneous transplantation. The style does not agree with the spirit of ʾAyyūbid architecture and decoration.
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1.
2. Karl Wulzinger & Carl Watzinger. Damaskus, die Islamische Stadt. Walter de Gruyter 1924 (p. 120-121).
3. Les monuments historiques de Damas. Beyrouth, Imprimerie Catholique 1932 (La ville musulmane, number 105).
4. Riḥlat ibn Ǧubayr, p. 232.
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Ernst Herzfeld. Damascus, Studies in Architecture III. Ars Islamica XI-XII 1946 (p. 1-71).
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