Mausoleum of Saladin

Saladin died in Damascus on 4 March 1193 and was first buried in the Citadel. According to the Arabic Wikipedia his son al-Afdal bought a house in the al-Kallasa quarter near the Umayyad Mosque and built a domed tomb there; the remains were transferred in 592 AH (1195). The English Wikipedia gives 1196 as the year of construction. Another son, al-Aziz Uthman, added the al-Aziziyya Madrasa east of the dome in 593 AH according to the Arabic Wikipedia, and the building is also known by that name.

According to the Arabic Wikipedia the walls were faced with blue tiles in 1137 AH, and in the early 20th century the Ottoman governor Ziya Pasha turned the ruined madrasa into a garden. Emperor Wilhelm II visited the tomb in 1898 during his journey to the Orient and had a wreath laid there, which after the First World War went to the Imperial War Museum; the English Wikipedia says it was removed by either Faisal I or T. E. Lawrence.[1][2][3]

The mausoleum is a domed building of a type typical of Ayyubid Damascus. The square tomb chamber has ablaq walls and is covered by four arches and a ribbed dome, with a two-stage drum of eight and sixteen sides forming the transition. A room for Quran recitation lies to the east, smaller rooms to the north. Of the madrasa, the Arabic Wikipedia says the mihrab and the arch of the eastern entrance remain, the English Wikipedia a few columns and an internal arch.

Two sarcophagi stand inside. The older wooden cenotaph (walnut, according to the Arabic Wikipedia), carved with geometric and floral motifs and Ayyubid inscriptions, is said to contain Saladin's remains. Beside it is an empty white marble sarcophagus of around 1900; the German and Arabic Wikipedia describe it as a gift of Wilhelm II in 1898, while the English Wikipedia attributes it to Sultan Abdul Hamid II and says Wilhelm II later restored it. The walls carry blue-green Ottoman tiles; according to the Arabic Wikipedia the tiled panel, 475 by 238 centimetres, is the largest complete arched panel of its kind in Damascus.[1][2][3]

The mausoleum is among the best-known medieval Islamic tombs in Syria and in the late 19th century became a site of symbolic politics of memory. According to the Arabic Wikipedia its garden holds five further graves: that of the Syrian politician Abd al-Rahman Shahbandar, assassinated in 1940; that of Yasin al-Hashimi, twice prime minister of Iraq, who died in Damascus in 1937; and those of three Ottoman aviators who had landed in Damascus in January 1914 and later crashed.[2][3]

According to the Arabic Wikipedia the square around the tomb was restored in the 2000s. No more recent condition report is available. The mausoleum lies within the old city of Damascus, for which UNESCO names the city walls, the Citadel and some mosques and tombs as surviving medieval buildings.[3][4]