Mausoleo di Shajar al-Durr

Shajar al-Durr (“Tree of Pearls”) was a Turkic concubine who rose from slavery to become sultan of Egypt in 1250^4,5. Her husband, the Ayyubid sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub (r. 1240-1249), died during the war with the Crusaders at Mansura, and his death was kept secret until his son and heir arrived^11,10,6. When that heir was assassinated she became sultan, minted coins with her titles and had the Friday sermon read in her name⁶. After less than three months she was forced to abdicate and marry the commander Aybak, who replaced her as sultan^2,7. Seven years later, when Aybak began courting a second wife, she had him killed, and in April 1257 she was murdered herself^7,4,2.

She gave al-Salih a domed tomb beside his madrasa on al-Mu'izz Street, where he was buried in 1250, a pairing that, as Ruggles notes, was followed in the endowed complexes of the Mamluks^11,4. For herself she chose a site near the shrines of women descended from the Prophet Muhammad, among them Sayyida Nafisa and Sayyida Ruqayya². ARCE describes the result, in 1250, as a palatial garden complex that probably included a mosque, minaret, bath and oratory around the domed mausoleum, which alone survives². Ruggles notes that she was the first sultan in Cairo to build her own tomb, perhaps because she had no surviving children⁷. ARCE says it is unclear whether she was actually buried in it, while the TDV encyclopedia says her body was laid there a few days after her murder^2,13.

The mausoleum is a square brick chamber with a floor area of about 50 m², covered by a keel-shaped dome². Eight windows pierce the drum, and the zone of transition below it has two tiers of squinches and windows grouped in threes². Carved stucco hoods crown the mihrab and the three entrance doors². ARCE finds its painted interior similar to that of the nearby mausoleum of the Abbasid caliphs (1242)². Ruggles argues that the gold glass mosaic of the mihrab, a Damascus-style technique often credited in Egypt to the later sultan Qalawun, was introduced by Shajar al-Durr herself⁸.

An Ottoman-period reference on the dome to an Abbasid caliph, Muhammad al-Khalifa, whom ARCE says cannot be historically authenticated, gave the shrine and then the whole street their name². A mosque called al-Khalifa, finished beside the dome in 1876, was demolished in the early 20th century, and a second one ordered by Sultan Husayn Kamil (r. 1914-1917) was never completed². A 2016 American University in Cairo thesis traces the building’s conservation history, focusing on the work of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe¹². Works from the 1990s into the early 2000s coated the walls and dome with cement that trapped salty rising damp². In 2013-2015 a Megawra team led by May al-Ibrashy, funded by ARCE’s Antiquities Endowment Fund and the Barakat Trust, removed the lower cement, desalinated the masonry and uncovered paintings hidden under plaster, probably of the 19th century^3,2. The work became the nucleus of a wider programme, Athar Lina (“Heritage is Ours”), that involves the street’s residents in caring for its heritage².

The inner dome is plain, but between its eight windows are eight painted medallions with tendrils, split palmettes and tulip-like flowers, and triangular soffits carry six-pointed star patterns². The mihrab holds a glass mosaic of gold and coloured tesserae: a three-branched design that fills the niche, set with rosettes of mother-of-pearl⁹. ARCE reads the motif as a tree of pearls, a play on her name, and Ruggles calls it “an extraordinary reference to herself in the most highly charged place in any building where prayer occurs”^2,8. The mosaic has suffered vandalism; it had been stabilised in an earlier restoration, so the 2013-2015 team left it alone^9,2. A painted wooden frieze names Shajar al-Durr as founder, “mother of Khalil” and sultana, and the lamp beam in front of the mihrab bears traces of a naskhi inscription of Quran 7:54².