‘Abdu Bey al-Babli

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

A slightly irregular rectangular walled enclosure measuring approximately 14 x 17 metres. The eastern façade with the main entrance faces Sultan Ahmad Street, and on the other sides, the lot borders on other funerary enclosures (the one to the west being a huge open courtyard. There is a narrow single-storey residential building along the eastern side, and an arcaded burial chamber with three wide pointed-arch opening onto an empty courtyard in the north-western part of the enclosure and a wooden dome over the central bay.
The main façade, built of ashlar stone and covered with a layer of yellow wash, has four rectangular shallow recesses covered with muqarnas hoods of two tiers. The entrance portal is placed in the second recess from the north. The other recesses each contain a rectangular window with a massive stone lintel with a segmental relieving arch above. The windows are of very good quality of stonemasonry, but plain, undecorated. The entrance portal has a similar lintel and relieving arch framed in knotted mouldings, with a marble inscription panel above. The inscription in raised relief states that the funerary enclosure of the late ‘Abdu Bey al Babli and his family was renovated in AH 1371 / AD 1952. The door and window leaves are panelled and decorated with mafruka motifs. The portal is flanked by two small pointed-arched windows, possibly originally intended for distribution of water from a sabil. All windows have simple iron grilles. The portal leads to a gateway opening with a semicircular arch on an empty courtyard.
The burial chamber on the southern side of the courtyard is an arcade opening with three pointed arches of horseshoe profiles, framed in resting on simple knotted mouldings and resting on thick stone pillars. The interior is screened off with elaborate mashrabiya wooden screens set between the pillars, with the entrance door in the eastern bay. The interior is plain. Over the central bay is a wooden dome with an octagonal drum pierced with large arched windows. The wooden zone of transition is undecorated, with simple triangles between the square base and the octagon of the dome drum. An opening in the floor covered with wooden planks leads to a crypt.