Madrasa and Mausoleum of al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub

Sultan al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub founded this madrasa in 1243 CE at Bayn al-Qasrayn on Al-Muizz Street. The school is especially important in the history of Islamic education in Cairo because it was the first madrasa in the city designed to teach all four Sunni schools of jurisprudence, replacing the Shi‘i educational framework that had dominated under the Fatimids. Each legal school had its own allocated teaching space. Much of the original complex has been lost, but the western iwan, façade and distinctive minaret survive. After al-Salih Najm al-Din Ayyub died in 1249 during the struggle against the Crusaders at Mansura, his wife Shajar al-Durr commissioned the adjoining mausoleum. The tomb therefore also marks the political transition at the end of Ayyubid rule and the rise of the Mamluk state.