Historical overview
[Picture source: © 1920 Creswell] [Picture source: © 1920 Creswell] The Madrasat al-Firdaws grew from an exceptional act of imperial patronage. The building was constructed during the period 633-39/1235-41 by Dayfa Khatun, the widow of al-Malik az-Zahir Ghazi and – during its construction – ruler of Aleppo on behalf of her grandson al-Malik an-Nasir Yusuf, then in his minority.
Dayfa Khatun was born in Aleppo in 582/1186, when her father, al-Malik al-ʿAdil (Saladin’s brother), was for a short time ruling Aleppo.[1] After Saladin’s death in 589/1193, relations between the different branches of the Ayyubid family worsened and conflicts over control of different territories arose, particularly when al-ʿAdil attempted to exclude Saladin’s offspring from power. Al-ʿAdil managed to impose himself in Damascus and Cairo and established his own descendants in these two places. In an attempt to defuse the conflict between Saladin’s only remaining son still ruling a province, al-Malik az-Zahir in Aleppo, and al-ʿAdil, a marriage was arranged between him and al-ʿAdil’s daughter, Dayfa Khatun. In 609/1212 she returned to Aleppo as the wife of al-Malik az-Zahir. The city she returned to at last overcame the decline and the instability that had started in the 10th century. Aleppo again became a prosperous city that managed to dominate the trade between the Mediterranean and the East. Numerous new construction projects, including the citadel and the city walls, bear witness to that.
After the death of her son al-Malik al-ʿAziz in 634/1236, Dayfa Khatun ruled over Aleppo during the minority of her grandson al-Malik an-Nasir II until her own death in 640/1242. In that period, she was involved in a number of construction projects. Allen suggests the construction of the Madrasat al-Firdaws started in 633/1235 and was finished around the founder’s death in 640/1242. In 639/1241, Dayfa Khatun had her brother al-Malik al-Hafiz Arslan Shah buried in the madrasa, so we may infer that the building must have been almost finished by that date. Her plan to use the madrasa as a family burial place did not come to fruition, as her son al-Malik al-ʿAziz and Dayfa Khatun herself were buried in the citadel.[2]
Female patronage itself is not uncommon in Ayyubid times, but the size and the splendor of Dayfa Khatun’s foundation seems only to have been possible because she was the regent of Aleppo. The long inscription running around the courtyard below the arcade and around the iwan introduces her as ‘ismat ad-dunya wa-d-din’ (‘infallibility of the world and the religion’), a title used by another female sovereign from roughly the same period, Shajarat ad-Durr in Cairo.[3]
