The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

imprisonment in the Red Tower on the Citadel, she was in turn
murdered in her bath by the slave girls of Aybeg’s former wife.
Despite the brevity of her reign, Shajar al-Durr effectively
presided over the transition from Ayyubid to Mamluk rule. Her
main architectural contribution was al-Salih’s mausoleum, but she
also built a madrasa in the cemetery of Sayyida Nafisa where her
own mausoleum (1250) stands, opposite the shrine of Sayyida
Ruqayya in an area where a number of female saints are venerated.
The mausoleum is a free-standing domed cube made of brick
covered with stucco. Its exterior underwent a number of changes
when it was incorporated into a nineteenth-century mosque
complex, and for this reason there is none of the original
decoration on the north-west and north-east sides. The dome, with
six windows at its base, has a keel-arch profile, and the stepped
zone of transition is pierced on each of its four axial sides by three
window lights. There are doors at the centre of each side of the
mausoleum, except in the qibla wall, which is decorated, like the
south-west wall, with keel-arched panels, rosettes and lozenges.
Inside, the most interesting feature is the mihrab with its mosaic
hood framed by a radiating, crystalline pattern of muqarnas. The
mosaic in gold, green, red and black features a tree bearing motherof-pearl
fruit – an allusion to Shajar al-Durr’s name, which means
‘Tree of Pearls’. The hood rests on the ends of a wooden Fatimid
frieze which extends into a continuous band bearing Kufic
inscriptions around the walls of the mausoleum. The precise
location of Shajar al-Durr’s grave is uncertain, but it is thought that
the present cenotaph stands over the grave of one of the later
Abbasid caliphs, either al-Mutawakkil I (d. 1406) or al-Mutawakkil
III (d. 1538).
Many of the earlier Abbasid caliphs are buried nearby in the
mausoleum of the Abbasid caliphs in the precincts of the Sayyida
Nafisa mosque. This significant monument is attributed to the
Ayyubid period, and the oldest inscribed cenotaph in this
mausoleum is that of Abu Nadlah, the caliph’s ambassador, who
died in 1242. It is thought that this may be the original date of the
tomb but whether this mausoleum was built for him (as suggested
by Creswell) is uncertain. The scale of the building suggests a royal
mausoleum, and there has been some speculation that it may have
been intended for al-Adil II, the sultan deposed by al-Salih in 1240.
What is reasonably certain is that the mausoleum was not
originally built for the Abbasid caliphs. The Abbasid caliphate was
wiped out later in the Mongol sack of Baghdad in 1258, but a
above: Mausoleum of Shajar al-Durr.
Ayyubid Architecture 121