While the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent was seeing in a dream that he was in a garden in the center of the capital, Damascus, the Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) appeared to him and instructed him to build a mosque in that land, so the Ottoman Sultan woke up from his sleep, pleased with what he saw and heard, and immediately ordered a portion of that to be cut. The garden, the construction of a large hospice in its center, and the construction of a mosque, which he recommended that its mihrab be in the same place where the Messenger (may God bless him and grant him peace) stood in a dream and indicated.

This is the story conveyed by a number of writers and historians, the most recent of which was Sheikh Najm al-Din al-Ghazi in his book "The Walking Planets in the Eyes of the Tenth Hundred", about the legal decision of the Sultan to build the Sulaymaniyah Hospice (west of Damascus) in the 16th century, and it is one of the most prominent and modern Ottoman hospices. And the most beautiful building, according to specialists.

Historically, the Sulaymaniyah Hospice was a place for performing religious duties, a resting place for pilgrims, and a refuge for the dispossessed and the poor among the people of Damascus, Muslims and others, and it remained so until the French colonizers entered the country in 1920;

Where General Gouraud and his forces took up residence in Tekia.

With the end of colonialism and the advent of 1948, the Sharia school in the Takiyeh returned to hold educational seminars and seminars for memorizing the Qur’an, and since the mid-seventies of the last century, the Takiyeh began to embrace dozens of ancient Damascene handicraft shops, and this part expanded to be known later as the Handicrafts Market.

Recently, this complex cultural and religious identity of the heritage landmark became threatened, after the Ministry of Tourism (in the government of the Syrian regime) notified the owners of the professions to vacate their shops before the end of the year, on the grounds of restoration.

Al-Takiyeh Sulaymaniyah Mosque in Damascus (Al-Jazeera)

From the Al-Ablaq Palace to the Sulaymaniyah Takiyeh

The site of the Sulaymaniyah Hospice, west of Damascus, witnessed the construction of a number of royal residences, the last of which was the Ablaq Palace of its owner, the Mamluk Sultan al-Zahir in Bairas (1228-1277 AD), which was named after the colors of its black and yellow building stones that were brought from Aleppo and Daraa.

However, large parts of the palace were subjected to burning during the Mongol leader Tamerlane’s invasion of Damascus in the year 803 AH (1402 AD), and the Ablaq Palace was not restored and rehabilitated except with the entry of the Ottoman Sultan Selim I to Damascus in the year 923 AH (1517 AD).

By the year 959 AH (1502 AD), Sultan Selim the Magnificent commissioned the famous Ottoman architect Mimar Sinan to draw up a modern architectural plan for a hospice at the site of the Ablaq Palace, and in the year 960 AH (1553 AD) a large number of workers began building the hospice under the supervision of The Damascene engineer Shihab al-Din ibn al-Attar, while other sources indicate that the supervising engineer was the Iranian Mulla Agha, and the construction took 6 years.

After that, you will rest on the banks of the Barada River, "a luxurious urban complex that enchants the hearts with its regular domes like knots around a large main dome, surrounded by two tall minarets, and interspersed with tall gardens and trees whose beauty mixes with the virtues of architecture, making this spot in Damascus one of the most beautiful and most beautiful spots," which is the Sulaymaniyah hospice, As described by Abdul Qadir Al-Rihawi in his book "Architecture in the Arab-Islamic Civilization".

The western entrance to the Sulaymaniyah Hospice (the island)

Ottoman architecture and damask motifs

The building of the Sulaymaniyah Hospice consists of two similar, connected architectural blocks, one of which is large and includes the mosque and the hospice, and the other is smaller and includes the school. Connecting between these two blocks is a market that was dedicated to caravans of pilgrims. that decorate the walls and rooms of the place.

The courtyard of the Sulaymaniyah school in the hospice, and the restoration work is evident in it (Al-Jazeera)

The two architectural blocks are surrounded by relatively low walls, while in the middle of them are two rectangular ponds fed by water and vertical fountains that were used for ablution. They are interspersed with chimneys in the form of small minarets and preceded by shaded arcades with ornate vaults.

The shady arcades bordering the courtyards in the Sulaymaniyah hospice (Al-Jazeera)

The Al-Takia Sulaymaniyah market extends from its far east to its far west, and dozens of shops that were previously commercial shops are lined on its sides, and since the seventies of the last century have turned into handicraft shops.

In addition to its traditional role as a place for benefactors, the poor, and the needy, the Sulaymaniyah hospice was designed to be a resting station for pilgrims on the pilgrimage road to Makkah Al-Mukarramah.

The place was equipped with spacious kitchens, bakeries, rest rooms, several chapels, a bath for ablution, and other necessary services for pilgrims.

And when the hospice turned into a house for teachers in 1923, it stopped hosting guests and accommodating arrivals to it for the first time since its establishment 4 centuries ago, but the hospice soon regained its identity as a hospitable place when it hosted a number of Palestinian families displaced to Damascus following the 1948 Nakba.

While the Sulaymaniyah School was famous for receiving students of Sharia sciences from all parts of the world, before it was transformed, with the opening of the Syrian University in Damascus in 1934, into a place for teaching dentistry, then into an archaeological landmark that includes a military museum with the continuation of religious activities in the chapels and the mosque to this day.

Sulaymaniyah Schoolyard (Al-Jazeera)

From an incubator of nobility to a repellent of the guardians of the legacy

In mid-October, the Ministry of Tourism in the regime's government warned the sheikhs of the Kar craftsmen in the handicrafts market of the need to vacate their shops before the new year 2023 for the purpose of restoration.

Entrance to the handicrafts market in Al-Takiyeh, Sulaymaniyah (Al-Jazeera)

Despite the craftsmen's appeal to the concerned authorities through local newspapers and media, and the intervention of the Damascus Tourism Chamber administration to promise the craftsmen their return after the completion of the restoration operations, Nidal Mashafej - Assistant Minister of Tourism - confirmed that there is no legal clause obligating the ministry to renew the craftsmen's contracts after their expiry each year, and that According to the law, the ministry has the right to demand the evacuation of shops invested by professionals for public interest purposes before the end of the contract period, without the shop owners having the right to claim any breakdown, damage, unfairness, or the like, as the official told the official newspaper, Tishreen.

Whereas, a member of the Damascus Chamber of Tourism, Arafat Awda Bashi, points out that most of what the shop owners hope for in the Sulaymaniyah hospice is to return to their shops after the completion of the restoration, to continue their work and preserve the intangible heritage that is threatened with extinction.

"Years ago, they evacuated the glass market belonging to the hospice under the pretext of its restoration, and to this day it is still in ruins and it is not clear if it will return to a market for glass, and I do not rule out that our shops will have a similar fate," said Haj Abu Muhammad (57 years), a shop owner in the Takiyeh. .

He continues, "It is as if the market stagnation in the last 10 years and the absence of well-to-do tourists and visitors from our shops were not sufficient for them, from which the simple citizen cannot buy goods because of their high cost, and all the losses we incurred to continue reviving these crafts during the war."

The Sulaymaniyah hospice has been undergoing restoration operations since 2019, and the first phase aimed at restoring part of the hospice and what is known as the glass market, while the second phase is dedicated to the handicrafts market and some of the interior parts of the hospice "to preserve the archaeological site from collapses and structural cracks," according to Nidal Mashfej.