The mausoleum and tomb of the Sultan (Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi) in Damascus, 1195 AD.
The tomb of the Ayyubid Kurdish sultan, Sultan Yusuf bin Ayyub bin Shadi, 1138 AD - 1193 AD nicknamed (Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi) is located in the Aziziyah School, next to the left wall of the Umayyad Mosque, in the Al-Kallasa neighborhood of the city of Damascus the current capital of the Republic of Syria in the Levant , And his body was moved to its current burial in the year 592 AH / 1195 AD, after it was buried in the Citadel of Damascus. The burial ground of the Sultan Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, the founder of the Kurdish Ayyubid state, is a simple building of the Ayyubid character, surmounted by a grooved dome, under which is the tomb of Sultan Salah al-Din. In the year 592 AH / 1195 AD, Al-Afdal bin Salah Al-Din bought the house of one of the righteous in Al-Kalasa neighborhood near the Umayyad Mosque,and built a dome in it to be a burial place for the body of his father, Sultan (Yusuf bin Ayyub - Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi), who died in the year 589 AH He was buried in the Citadel of Damascus first. And his remains were transferred to that house where he was buried under that dome. In the year 593 AH / 1196 AD, when King Al-Aziz Othman bin Salah Al-Din Al-Ayyubi entered the city of Damascus, he ordered the construction of Al-Aziziyya School to the east of Salahdin Dome, Thus, the school was connected to the dome of Salah al-Din, until it became as if it belonged to the school. In the year 1137 AH / 1725 AD the days of the Ottoman rule,the walls of the tomb of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi were covered with blue Kashani stone. As for the school, part of it was destroyed. In the early twentieth century AD, the Ottoman governor of Damascus Dia Pasha ordered the conversion of the destroyed Azizia Madrasa into a garden, and annexed it to the cemetery of Salah al-Din. Today, nothing remains of the school except for the mihrab and the arch of the eastern entrance, which became the garden of the burial. The mausoleum of Sultan Salah al-Din was made of walnut wood, engraved with authentic Ayyubid motifs and writings.
As for its walls, it was covered in the year 1725 AD with blue Kashani stone.
The Kashani board in the tomb of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi is the largest and most complete curved board in all of Damascus. Its base is 475 cm and its height is 238 cm. It is composed of a group of various tiles of a Damascene character, with floral ornamental shapes. At the bottom of the large panel is a panel above the window, which is a transverse carpet consisting of tiles with geometric motifs, and the panel is framed with a band of refined flowers. The dimensions of this panel are 65 cm * 80 cm. Next to the wooden mausoleum of Sultan Salahdin Al-Ayyubi is an empty marble mausoleum, presented by the Emperor of Germany Ghelium II during his visit to Damascus in 1898 AD during the reign of the Ottoman Sultan Abdul Hamid II. When General Henry Gouraud, who led the French army at the end of World War I in the Ottoman-French War 1919-1923 AD entered Damascus, he headed towards the tomb of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, the hero of the Battle of Hattin, which put the real end to the Crusades. kicked him and said: {Wake up Salahuddin, we have returned, and my presence here consecrates the victory of the cross over the crescent},
The tomb building Saladin Al-Ayyubi is located in a beautiful yard that was restored and taken care of in the 2000s. The burial garden, which is a paved garden with a lake and fruit trees, includes five graves: The first is the tomb of Dr. Abdel-Rahman Al-Shahbandar, the Syrian fighter who was assassinated by the occupation agents on July 6, 1940 AD. The second is the tomb of Yassin al-Hashimi, who assumed the presidency of the Iraqi ministry twice, and came to Damascus after the British coup against him, and he died in Damascus on the twenty-seventh of January 1937 AD.
The other three graves are evidence that they are among the first Ottoman pilots, who landed in Damascus in January 1914 AD, and their planes crashed near Tiberias and Jaffa, And they are Sadiq Beg and Fathi Beg, who were supposed to complete their journey to Palestine and then Cairo, but the plane crashed near Tiberias and it was decided to transfer their bodies to Istanbul, and after their arrival in Damascus Fadl Their families buried the pioneers of aviation in their land. And Nuri Beg, whose plane crashed in Jaffa, and his body was transferred to Damascus and buried next to his two colleagues.[1] [2]