Madrasa of Umm al-Sultan Sha'ban

The Madrasa of Umm al-Sultan Sha'ban (Arabic: مدرسة أم السلطان شعبان, romanized: Madrasa Umm al-Sulṭān Shaʿbān) is an Islamic madrasa, mausoleum, and mosque complex, located in the Al-Darb al-Ahmar area of Islamic Cairo, Egypt. The complex was completed in 770 AH (1368/1369 CE) during the Mamluk-era on the order of Sultan al-Ashraf Sha'ban in honour of his mother, Khawand Baraka (also referred to as Umm al-Sultan Sha'ban). It is located outside Bab Zuweila along al-Tabbana street, and is adjoined to the north by the Bayt al-Razzaz palace. In addition to the madrasa, mausoleum, and mosque, the complex includes a hawd (water trough), and a maktab (primary school).

History

Al-Ashraf Sha'ban (r. 1363–1377) was a grandson of al-Nasir Muhammad and was 10 years old when he came to the throne. His mother, Khawand Baraka, was one of the most notable powerful women in Egypt at this time. She was concubine then wife to Husayn (Sha'ban's father), a son of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, who never rose to the throne. When Husayn died in 1362, she married the amir Uljay al-Yusufi (who built his own madrasa in the nearby Suq al-Silah street). She grew more influential and well known when Sha'ban came to the throne as a child. Sha'ban commissioned the madrasa and mausoleum in 770 AH (1368/1369 CE), reportedly to honour his mother who was on pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at the time. However, given that he was aged 15 years at the time, there is a fair chance that the decision to build the madrasa was in accordance with his mother's own wishes, especially as there are few other examples of such impressive monuments being built for the female relatives of Mamluk sultans. The site of the madrasa was reportedly once a cemetery for the people of Cairo. Khawand returned to Cairo the next year (in 1369–70) and endowed the madrasa and its mosque. She died in 1373 and was buried in the larger of the two mausoleums attached to her madrasa. In 1375 Sha'ban founded and embarked on the construction of his own ambitious mosque, madrasa, and mausoleum complex, on the location of what is now the Maristan of al-Mu'ayyad, at the northwestern foot of the Citadel. It was lavishly decorated and, like his mother's madrasa, it had two domes (probably inspired by the double-domed mausoleums to the south of the Citadel, such as the Sultaniyya Mausoleum). However, Sha'ban was assassinated in 1377, before his mausoleum complex was finished and ready for use. He ended up instead being buried in the smaller mausoleum of his mother's madrasa. The complex he had begun to build was eventually dismantled by Sultan Faraj ibn Barquq in 1411 in order to reuse its materials for a number of other buildings including the so-called Zawiya of Faraj ibn Barquq, located in front of Bab Zuweila, and the madrasa-mosque of his emir Jamal al-Din Ustadar. Once completed, the madrasa taught Islamic law in the Hanafi and Shafi'i madhhabs. Some excellent illuminated manuscripts of the Qur'an date from Sha'ban's reign and it is believed that this madrasa may have contained a workshop for producing them. The Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo also has other well-crafted artifacts that come from this madrasa. In the late 15th century, Sultan Qaytbay built a palace or mansion adjacent to the madrasa. In the 19th century, the palace was merged with another adjacent mansion built in 1776 by Ahmad al-Razzaz. The building is now known as Bayt al-Razzaz, and today its façade is contiguous with the façade of the madrasa of Sha'ban. Starting in 2000, the building was restored by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture.

Endowment

The complex was funded through a waqf (endowment) and the waqfiyya (endowment deed) for this institution has partially survived with the early part of the scroll missing. The waqfiyya recorded urban rental properties and agricultural properties in Syria and Egypt. The urban rental properties in Cairo included a qaysāriyya (commercial building) and a rabʿ (apartment building) in Cairo. The waqfiyya also recorded agrarian property in the province of Aleppo (Syria) in addition to the urban properties. According to Ibn al-Ji'an, there were two Egyptian properties tied to the madrasa's endowment and its founder, Khawand Baraka. The first was the district of Saft Abi Turab in the province of al-Gharbiyya was endowed for the Madrasa of Umm al-Sultan Sha'ban. This was a large district with a fiscal value (ʿibra) of 20,000 dinars jayshi per year and was one of the wealthiest agrarian properties endowed during the Bahri Mamluk period as recorded in Ibn al-Ji'an's recension of Mamluk cadastral records. Another district, Taqadus in the province of al-Sharqiyya was part of Khawand Baraka's endowment.

Architecture

The overall plan of the building is arranged around a central courtyard and two mausoleum chambers with domes.

Exterior The layout of the complex is somewhat unusual due to its unusual site at the corner of the main street (Tabbana street, the continuation of al-Darb al-Ahmar street) and a minor side street joining it at an angle. The floor plan of the complex deals with this by forming a three-sided façade around this corner. The monumental main entrance is at the northern end of the eastern façade, but a small side entrance to the madrasa existed on the western side. The complex has two domes corresponding to the two mausoleum chambers inside. The minaret and the larger mausoleum dome (which belonged to Khawand's mausoleum) stand together at the southwestern corner, right where the two streets join, thus maximizing their visibility. The exterior of the two domes is ribbed or fluted, like other Mamluk domes of the period (e.g. the Sultaniyya Mausoleum or the nearby Madrasa of Uljay al-Yusufi). Around the drums of the domes are inscriptions in Arabic. Originally, the letters of the inscription were gilded against a green background. The top of the octagonal minaret collapsed or was destroyed in recent centuries, but has been reconstructed (based on photographs of the old one) in the most recent restoration completed in 2007. The exterior walls of the building are tall and imposing (around 18 meters high). The triple windows near its upper parts are partly decorative, seeing as some of the windows (on the left, overlapping with the eastern iwan inside) are blind (i.e. blocked) and don't serve to allow light in.

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