General Sa‘id Pasha Nasr

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

A rectangular walled enclosure measuring ca. 35 x 15 m, with southern, western and northern façades facing the streets, and bordering to the east on a neighbouring enclosure. The southern end of the enclosure is taken by a tall building measuring ca. 12 x 15 m, while the rest is an open courtyard. There is a small simple single-storey room in the north-western corner of the courtyard. The main building is of strictly symmetrical, axial design. In the centre of the southern façade is a Neo-Mamluk entrance portal. The rectangular entrance door, with its lintel and the relieving arch above it framed in knotted mouldings, is set in a recess topped with an elaborate trilobe hood with “stalactite” muqarnases. The portal and its hood are also framed in knotted mouldings. In the ground floor, there are simple undecorated windows in the plain wall, while on the upper floor, on the left (W) side is a set of twin windows topped with arches resting on engaged colonettes with an oculus above – the design closely following the Mamluk-period designs. The southern façade is strictly axial, with three window sets identical with this in the southern façade, and a solid wall with no windows on the ground floor. In the centre of the façade is a simple classically-based gate with a semicircular arch flanked by simple pilasters. An identical gate is placed in the middle of the western wall of the courtyard north of the main building. The main portal, entrance gates, windows, and corners were built of ashlar stone, while other walls are of rough stone masonry and plastered. Recently, all facades of the main building were covered with a layer of thick, textured cement plaster.
The western gate leads to a long, narrow hall in the middle of the building that opens with three huge arches onto a double-height hall on the northern side. In the south-east and south-west corners (to the sides of the vestibule behind the neo-Mamluk portal in the southern façade) are rooms on two storeys. (Interior inaccessible, description based on aerial photography.)