Muhammad Hasanein Badawi

Description (The direction towards Mecca (Qibla) is described as eastern and other directions are named accordingly)

The modest-size walled funerary enclosure is a rectangle comprising a courtyard and a single-storey building on its eastern (shorter) side which faces a street. The tripartite front façade is formally and strictly symmetrically designed in a modernist-tinged neo-Mamluk style. The architectural details in cement plaster skillfully imitate the forms of Mamluk-period stone architecture. The central entrance section raises above the side sections forming a pishtaq (Petersen, 234). The entrance gate is placed in a recess topped with a muqarnas hood with a crowning fluted niche. The muqarnases in the middle row of the three-tiered arrangement skillfully imitate “stalactite” forms which they in fact have not.
The windows to the sides are placed in shallower recesses topped with muqarnas friezes. The windows and doors have a typically Mamluk decoration of knotted mouldings that frame the lintels and (in this case, imitated) flat arches of joggled voissioirs over segmental relieving arches. The marble lintel over the entrance door bears an inscription with the founder’s name and date, while a sunken panel above the entrance recess contains the verse 15:46 (in surat l-hig’r) of the Qur’an: “Enter ye here in peace and security” (translation: Yusuf ‘Ali). Below, two diamond-positioned square inscriptions to the sides contain the shahada. The door and windows are fitted with wrought-iron grilles with decoration of simple Art Noveau-inspired design. In the relieving arches over the openings are painted glazed ceramic tiles. They do not form regular patterns, but are randomly placed fragmentary pieces of an Ottoman-style wall decoration. This may either result from the tiles being genuine Ottoman-period Iznik or Kütahia tiles (or their Syrian imitations), or else from the designer’s desire to create such an impression. Behind the front façade is an open loggia with concrete roof supported on two square stone pillars with chamfered corners. The side (southern) elevation is much lower than the building on the front side, with a stepped transitional section. Both the ornaments over the divisions of the side facades and the crenellations of the front façade are, rather typically for their period, very free modernist interpretations of Mamluk architectural forms in the Art Deco vein.