Commemorative Architecture and Salih’s “Blessed Mausoleum”

Abstract

As the widow of the Ayyubid sultan, Shajar al-Durr represented a vital link to that dynasty. But as the newly appointed sultan and a former slave, she was historically important as the first Mamluk ruler of Egypt. She built a domed tomb for her husband, adding it to his madrasa and thus endowing that educational institution with a new commemorative function. With the unification of the tomb and madrasa, a powerful new ensemble was created in which both functions were enhanced: the tomb absorbing the charitable purpose of the adjacent madrasa, and the madrasa gaining new political purpose as an embodied site of memory. In Cairo thereafter, a mausoleum’s large dome became a semiotic sign for the individual interred beneath it so that architecture gained “identity.”