Masged Gumm'aa al-Nasr Muhammad

Al-Nasr Muhammad ibn Qalawun ruled from AD1293-1294, from 1299-AD1309. amd finally and firmly from AD1310-1341. The Mamluks had deposed the Ayyubids in AD1250, but al-Nasr Muhammad was the Mamluki sultan who displaced bulk of the Ayyubid monuments, such as they were, from the Citadel, a strong point that had been founded by Salah id-Diin Ayyub ibn Yusuf himself. (Its strength is still in evidence: circling the Citadel by automobile, one can see how a siege army might die of thirst and hunger before the fortress yielded. There are are the walls, and then the is the landscape.) In AD1310, the sultan buit al-Iwan al-Kibiir (the Great Hall); in AD1312 the first interation of his own masged gumm'aa and a new hippodrome on the plain below the Citadel; in AD1314 al-Qasr al-Ablaq (the Striped Palace). In AD1318, al-Nasr Muhammad demolished storehouses, the homes of 'amir, the Mint, and his own first mosque to build the a second iteration of a masged gumm'aa. The minarets, with their unusual, Persian design, survive from this masged. Finally, in AD1335, the sultan built the Masged Gumm'aa al-Nasr Muhammad as one more or less sees it today, but keeping minarets. The overly-smooth maqsura dome is a modern rebuilding in concrete that was done in AD1935. Al-Nasr Muhammad, son of the great sultan Qalawun, may have been as interested in fixing his dynasty as establishing permanent martial authority as legitimate.

Muhammad 'Ali Basha leveled most of the Mamluki structures, leaving only this one. We owe our images of the Mamluki royal assemby to the fascination of European artists, who were particularly enamored of the Great Hall.

• Brian Broadus