al-Qaiqan mosque

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View of the southwest corner of the al-Qaiqan Mosque in Aleppo

The al-Qaiqan mosque , German crow mosque ( Arabic جامع القيقان Jami al-Qaiqan ), is one of the oldest existing mosques in Aleppo , Syria .

The mosque is located north of the Antioch Gate in the al-Aqaba district, west of the Umayyad Mosque in the old town of Aleppo . Tell Aqaba , the hill on which the district is located, is one of the oldest populated areas in Aleppo. The mosque was built in the 12th century.

The entrance on the west side leads to a small inner courtyard with a fountain, from there to a prayer hall. Upstairs there is a room that, according to an inscription , was built by Jamal-ad-Din to the left of the portal . The portal arch shows the typical Syrian alternation of black and light stones (Ablaq). Parts of old column shafts and cuboids are embedded as protruding spoils in the portal facade and the front of the portal staircase. It is believed that they came from a Hittite temple that could have stood at this point. Aleppo was under Hittite rule several times and was in the second half of the 14th century BC. Seat of a secondary school Šuppiluliumas I under his son Telipinu . This is mentioned on an inscription polie in the southern outer wall of the crow mosque. A spolia in the form of a tabula ansata is also embedded in the southern outer wall.

  • Portal of the al-Qaiqan mosque in Aleppo

  • South wall of the al-Qaiqan Mosque Aleppo, looking west

Hittite inscriptions in the outer wall

Hittite inscription in the south wall of the al-Qaiqan mosque in Aleppo

In the southern outer wall of the mosque, one of the very few Hittite building inscriptions known in Syria is embedded as a spolie . The text in hieroglyphic Luwian reads: "A performance which God Hepat- sarruma of Talmi-sarruma , son of Telipinu , the great priest, king of Aleppo." Whether the inscription comes from a temple at exactly this point has not been scientifically proven.

literature

  • Abdallah Hadjar, translated by Annelies Hadjar: The Monuments of Aleppo. Aleppo 2007.
  • Kay Kohlmeyer: The temple of the weather god in Aleppo (Gerda Henkel lectures). Münster: Rehma, 2000, ISBN 3-930454-24-6 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jean Sauvaget: Essai sur le développement d'unegrande ville syrienne des origines aux milieu du XIXe siècle . Paris 1941.
  2. ↑ a b c Abdallah Hadjar, translated by Annelies Hadjar: The Monuments of Aleppo . Aleppo 2007.
  3. ^ Klinger, Jörg .: The Hittites . Orig.-issued edition. Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-53625-0 .
  4. ↑ H. Th. Bossert: Comments on a hieroglyphic Hittite inscription from Aleppo . In: Syria . tape 31 , no. 3 , 1954, ISSN  0039-7946 , p. 225-253 , doi : 10.3406 / syria.1954.4999 ( persee.fr [accessed December 4, 2018]).

Coordinates: 36 ° 12 ′ 27.4 ″  N , 37 ° 8 ′ 45.6 ″  E