Architectural and art historical features

by Rami Alafandi

[Picture source: © 1990 Julia Gonnella]

The Great Mosque is the largest (approximately 8000 m²)[1] and one of the oldest mosques in Aleppo. It was built and destroyed, rebuilt and renovated over thirteen centuries. Like no other monument in Aleppo, the building mirrors the changing history of the city and its rulers from early Islamic to present times. Each building measure formed a minor or major addition to its own unique architectural style. The present building’s characteristic appearance was mostly shaped between the 5th and 8th century AH / 11th and 14th century AD.

The 1st century AH / 8th century AD initial version of Aleppo’s Great Mosque is considered to be a copy of the famous Great Mosque or Umayyad Mosque of Damascus.[2] The Aleppine chronicler Ibn al-ʿAdim (d. 660 AH / 1262 AD) stated, relying on older sources, that the Umayyad Mosque of Aleppo was richly decorated with marble and mosaics like the one in Damascus.[3] However, no evidence has been found to prove that. Nowadays, the Great Mosque is simply decorated.

At least the basic layout of the hexagonal ablutions fountain is the oldest feature still visible from Hamdanid times (945–1002 AD), when Aleppo was the seat of a ruling dynasty. According to Sauvaget, the renovation work of the Hamadanid emirs was not sufficient enough to bring back the glory of the Great Mosque as originally made by the Umayyad caliphs (r. 661–750 AD).[4]

The recently collapsed minaret of the Great Mosque goes back to the time of the Seljuk rulers of Syria at the end of the 5th century AH / 11th century AD, during which Aleppo was the seat of most powerful local leaders from the urban nobility.

A remarkable structural intervention was the enlargement of the eastern part of the prayer hall that changed the shape of the southeastern part of the Great Mosque in the following period, when Aleppo had become an important place for Zangid rule in Syria (1128–1183 AD). According to Allen, the eastern arcade seems to have Zangid features, especially the stone work of the entrance’s arch, and Mamluk features on the simply decorated southern arches of the same facade.[5]

The prayer hall’s columns and ceiling were replaced by pillars and cross vaults during the refurbishment in the Mamluk period (1260–1516) as well as the main prayer niche. This was a crucial intervention as it changed the character of the prayer hall completely giving it its current appearance. Thus, the vaulting tendency rooted in the Aleppine building tradition was taken up and combined with characteristic forms of crusader architecture. This type of pillared mosque with cross-vaulted roof became a model both for the renovation of older mosques and the construction of new ones in Aleppo; also, it was spread to nearby provincial towns and other Syrian provinces.[6] In particular, it was applied on other congregational mosques.

The Mamluk minbar or pulpit (end of 7th / 13th century – first half of 8th / 14th century AH/AD), and the door of the khatib, or orator room are the most prominent wooden historical furnishings inside the prayer hall; the minbar is a unique masterpiece, being the oldest one of its type and whose design is from Aleppo.[7] It is decorated with geometric patterns designed by five- and six-sided polygons and inlays. The khatib room’s door similarly shows geometric patterns framed by calligraphic verses in Thuluth style.

The prayer hall’s entrance dates from the Ottoman period (1516–1918), whereas the courtyard facade in general appears to be Mamluk. Allen doubted it was from the Zangid era.[8] It shows an ablaq design – alternating black, white and yellow stone masonry – reminiscent of Mamluk prototypes (see picture 10).[9]

The shrine room of Zakariya shows a characteristic Ottoman feature. It is covered by several types of ceramic tiles (see picture 11). First, there is a unique type of hexagonal tiles, based on an early Iznik blue and white prototype from the 16th century with plump peony motifs. A second group of tiles are of the ‘Dome of the Rock’ type. Also, there are two types of rectangular border tiles decorated with cruciform ogival medallions amongst scrolling arabesques and foliage and two different colour schemes: one in black on a turquoise ground, the other in apple green outlined in brown on a white ground.[10]

Figure 8. Great Mosque, prayer hall, donation inscription above the prayer niche (mihrab) [Picture source: © 2011 Issam Hajjar]