The Madrasa-Mausoleum of Emirs Sanjar and Salar

The Mausoleum-Madrasa of Emir Salar and Emir Sanjar al-Jawili towers up the cliffside of the Yushkur Plateau, formidable and spare in its decoration, its silhouette dominated by its distinctive twin domes. Built in the first decade of the 1300s, it is a monument to the love between two emirs.

Those domes house the tombs of Salar and Sanjar, whose bond was so strong they wanted to rest side by side for eternity. Of course, theirs was a Mamluk sort of love: One was forced to betray the other and lead him to a horrifying death.

Most likely, their connection formed in their 20s when they both were mamluks of Sultan Qalawoun. Salar was a Mongol captured in battle. Sanjar al-Jawili, who was probably Kurdish, was brought as a slave from Amida, modern-day Diyarbakir in Turkey. After Qalawoun’s death in 1290, Salar rose more quickly, entering the ranks of the most senior emirs. He brought Sanjar into his personal retinue.

Salar soon became the most powerful man in the Mamluk sultanate — the real ruler behind the throne of Qalawoun’s 14-year-old son, Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed.

Al-Nasir Mohammed had first been installed as sultan at the age of 7. But he was quickly deposed amid the machinations of his father’s emirs and was sent to live in Karak, a former Crusader castle near the Dead Sea in what’s now Jordan.

After one of his successors was assassinated, the emirs gathered to pick a new sultan. But they were split between Salar and Baybars al-Jashankir, another of Qalawoun’s top emirs, so as a compromise they agreed to restore al-Nasir Mohammed to the throne. It was presumed that the boy-sultan would be a pliable front while Salar and Baybars exercised real power.

And for a while, the arrangement worked.

Karak Castle, Jordan. Photo by Berthold Warner, Wikimedia Commons

Al-Nasir Mohammed relied on Salar and trusted him. Salar was a master at maneuvering through court intrigues. Sanjar al-Jawili was his right-hand man and confidant — “none more knowledgeable than he,” as one contemporary put it. Together, they stacked key palace positions with their own supporters.

This often caused tensions with Baybars al-Jashankir, who was trying to steer the lucrative court postings to his own supporters. Their ruling partnership was a rocky one. Baybars resented that Salar made himself the main decision-maker, and the feuds between their underlings repeatedly escalated into arguments between the two. Salar kept the peace by knowing how to bend to opposition, hiding his anger until he could strike back with brutality and impose his will. One chronicler recounts a scene right out of modern cartoons where Salar literally twirls his moustache as he eyes a rival and mutters under his breath, “Oh, I swear I’ll kill you soon, or my name isn’t Salar!”

It was around this time that Sanjar built his madrasa with a joint mausoleum for himself and Salar. As the historian al-Maqrizi wrote: “So powerful was their friendship’s love that they built their tombs next to each other.”

The domes housing the tombs of Sanjar and Salar

So powerful a love, in fact, that Salar almost went to war with his partner in power Baybars to protect Sanjar.

It started when an underling of Baybars was passed up for the wazir position in favor of an ally of Sanjar. He whispered slanders against Sanjar to Baybars, who in a fury demanded to Salar that Sanjar be punished. Salar refused. “You know the brotherhood between me and Sanjar,” he told Baybars. “We’re so close we’ve each vowed to take in the other’s children if one of us dies.”

Tensions spiraled between Salar and Baybars. They stopped talking. Their soldiers went on alert, deploying in the streets fully armed and armored, ready for a fight. Clashes between the Sultanate’s two most powerful men threatened to break out at any moment.

It took the other senior emirs stepping in to prevent it. They forced a compromise by which Sanjar was sent away to Damascus. Salar had no choice but to accept.

Meanwhile, Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed, growing into adulthood, was chafing under the domination of Salar and Baybars.

“How am I sultan?” he fumed to his retainers. “I rule over nothing. Death is preferable to this..”

Any time the sultan tried to weigh in on decision-making, the two ignored him. When he proposed a tour of Syria to survey his realm, Salar dismissed the idea as a needless expense. Salar and Baybars didn’t even let the sultan, a great lover of horses, have first pick whenever the Bedouin horse merchants came around; they always bought up the best horses before he had a chance to look at them.

Most humiliating of all, Salar and Baybars kept him on a limited allowance. Constantly strapped for cash, al-Nasir Mohammed was reduced to taking money in secret from his wazir. When Salar found out, he had the wazir removed and eventually beaten to death.

At the same time, Salar was becoming enormously wealthy. Al-Nasir Mohammed saw firsthand just how wealthy when, tiring of virtual imprisonment in the Citadel, he went on a hunting trip in Upper Egypt. There he passed ruined, dilapidated villages, all of which were his royal holdings. Their residents came up to him, begging him for help, and told him Salar had taken all the good fields for himself. Any prosperous towns he saw were sending their profits to Salar.

It got so bad that al-Nasir Mohammed conspired with one of his Mamluks to arrest or even kill Salar and Baybars next time they came to court in the Citadel. They heard of the plot, rallied the other emirs around them and besieged the Citadel.

Realizing he was too weak, the young sultan feigned submission. “From now on, I shall do nothing without consulting you,” he told Salar. “I realize now you want only the best for me.”

At these words, Baybars shuddered. “That’s actually terrifying. He’s full of tricks.”

Portal of the Madrasa-Mausoleum of Emir Salar and Emir Sanjar

And he was. Al-Nasir Mohammed told his overseers that he was going on hajj to Mecca, a trip they could not refuse him. But on the way to the Hijaz, he and his household and his Mamluks took a left turn and went to Karak Fortress. He locked himself inside and sent a message to Cairo announcing he was quitting the throne.

Salar’s reply dripped with condescension: “Stop this childish behavior. Come back now. You’ll just regret it later when you want to come back and can’t.”

Al-Nasir Mohammed responded by sending back all his royal regalia with a note: “Leave me alone in this fortress, away from you.”

So on April 5, 1309, Baybars al-Jashankir was installed as sultan. Salar had wanted the throne for himself but was intimidated by Baybars’ backing among powerful factions of the Mamluk soldiery, so he took the post of deputy sultan.

Almost immediately, however, the governors of the provinces in Syria, all of whom had been senior Mamluks of al-Nasir Mohammed’s father, sent messages to him in Karak offering to march on Cairo to restore him. Within a few months, al-Nasir Mohammed joined his forces with theirs and headed toward Cairo. Among the emirs who joined him was Sanjar.

As he marched, al-Nasir Mohammed sent messengers to Cairo urging the emirs to abandon Baybars. He wrote personally to Salar, asking for his support and telling him, “It is you who raised me. It is you who gave me the throne. You know all that is between us, both the secret and the public.”

Salar saw that it was time to bend. As al-Nasir Mohammed’s army approached, Salar met him outside Cairo’s gates, kissed the ground at his feet, proclaimed his loyalty and threw him a giant feast. Still, Salar thought it best to get out of town. He asked to be posted as governor in Shobak, another former Crusader fortress south of the Dead Sea, and his request was granted.

Baybars abandoned the throne and fled to Upper Egypt. He was soon captured and brought to the Citadel before the now restored Sultan al-Nasir Mohammed.  

“You remember how you shouted at me?” al-Nasir Mohammed berated him. “How you rejected my opinions? How you denied me money? You wouldn’t even allow me a bit of sugar.”

“I know, it’s all true,” Baybars wept. “I can only ask for your mercy.”

He didn’t get it; he was executed that night.

Now in his 20s, al-Nasir Mohammed set about on a purge. He invited the emirs to a banquet in the Citadel and arrested two dozen of them before they could even start the meal. He elevated his own loyalist Mamluks to emir status to replace them. The arrests of emirs went on for months.

Finally, the sultan felt strong enough to go after Salar.

He sent an envoy to Shobak asking Salar to come back to Cairo. Salar feigned illness.

The sultan sent a second message, this time telling Salar he needed him by his side and wanted him to serve as his deputy once more. And to seal the deal, he had the message delivered by Salar’s most trusted friend, Sanjar.

Salar surely knew it was a trap. Sanjar surely knew he was leading Salar into a trap.

Salar refused to return with him to Cairo. He declared he would shave his head and retire to a life of asceticism, and he set off for Mecca. Sanjar accompanied him, still trying to convince him to come to Cairo.

Flailing for a way to avoid his fate, Salar slid into despair. After days of riding, they came across the ruins of a fortress. Salar sat in it and refused to move. Once the most powerful man in Egypt and Syria, he was now sitting in a remote pile of old stones with nowhere to go.

“You can’t stay here, there’s no food or water,” Sanjar pleaded with him. “No one is dearer to the sultan than you. He would never harm you.”

Salar relented. There was still a small hope. Maybe the sultan really did want him back as deputy. Or,  it wasn’t unusual for a sultan to imprison an emir after a falling out, then change his mind and restore him to a high post after a few years.

In the end, there was no hope at all. Salar was imprisoned the moment he arrived in Cairo.

Al-Nasir Mohammed was determined to exact vengeance for every humiliation he suffered during his childhood. He ordered Sanjar to oversee the confiscation of Salar’s massive wealth. Sanjar had to march his old friend through all his palaces and force him to reveal where he had hidden his money. They unlocked hidden cellars, dug up buried stashes of treasure, hauled out chests and sacks. It took four days and 50 mule loads just to carry all the gold and silver from his palace. Some 1.4 million gold dinars and more than 2 million silver dirhams, by one account. A constant stream of jewelry, necklaces, rubies and emeralds flowed from his storerooms; diamonds and pearls in a chest; silver and gold plateware, inlaid furnishings; 300 robes lined with white ermine fur, another 400 lined with squirrel fur, dozens of saddles embroidered with gold.

A brass candlestick commissioned by Emir Salar, made in 1307. The inscription on it reads: “In the name of His Excellence, the scholar, the lord, the governor, the warrior in Jihad, stalwart of the fortresses, the defender of the frontiers, the guardian of the borders, supported and made triumphant by God, Saif al-Din Salar, deputy of the Glorious Sultanate, may his victory by glorified.” From the collections of the Musee du Louvre

The sultan didn’t stop there. They went to the home of Salar’s daughter and took everything of value. Heralds went through the markets demanding merchants surrender any money or goods they were holding for Salar. They carted away the grain from Salar’s silos, they rounded up the horses from his stables, herded his camels from their corrals and marched his Mamluks, concubines and slaves out of his household to be sold off or given away.

When he was satisfied they had it all, the sultan had Salar imprisoned in a tower of the Citadel.

And he ordered him to be starved to death.

It was a grueling death, one that the sultan made as cruel as possible. After Salar was left a week with no food or water, the guards entered his cell with three platters. The desperate Salar rushed to open them. One was a platter of his gold coins, another of his silver coins, and another of his jewels, a final taunt from al-Nasir Mohammed to the man who made his youth a misery.

Then they walled up Salar's cell and left him.

When they opened it again weeks later, on Sept. 19, 1310, they found his corpse with his sandal clenched in his teeth. In his hunger, he had tried to eat the leather.

As the biographer al-Safadi wrote in a bit of poetry:

"He had treasures rivalling Qaroun, riches poured over him like an inundation/ Then not even a bit of marrow could he find, and he died in prison of starvation/ A thousand curses on this world of ours and its vanities! Let the lesson of Salar be our consolation.”

(Qaroun, mentioned in the Quran — Korah in the Bible — was the architype of a wealthy, evil man.)

The sultan allowed Sanjar to wash Salar’s body and bury him here in their mausoleum.

Sanjar had made his choice between his beloved and his sultan. He then went on to have a flourishing career. Elevated to a senior emir, he was given multiple posts throughout the 30-year reign of al-Nasir Mohammed, considered the Golden Age of the Mamluk Sultanate.

Serving twice as governor of Gaza, he became known as a prodigious builder across Palestine, constructing mosques, madrasas, hospitals and water systems. He’s credited with turning Gaza itself into a metropolitan city, as the biographer al-Safadi exclaims in florid rhyming prose:

“He built there a palace of such spacious dimension, its construction reaching such high ascension, drawing such great attention; he built a bathhouse with capacious rooms, its air filled with perfumes, its waters flowing, its ceilings toward heaven growing, the glass in its domes glowing, its marble dazzling like flowers’ blooms.”

That bathhouse was the Hammam al-Sumara, which still exists in Gaza today though in a highly altered form. Also still standing today are Sanjar’s extension to the Ibrahimi Mosque / Cave of the Patriarchs compound in Hebron and the madrasa he built at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound, overlooking the Dome of the Rock from the highest point of the Mount’s walls, where the Roman Antonia Fortress once stood. Apparently lost is the caravanserai that Sanjar established in the town of al-Hamra northeast of Jerusalem — a site that is now just pastures after the village was erased by Israel after the 1948 war. The name that he gave to that caravanserai: Khan Salar.

A photomechanical print dating from ca. 1890-1900 showing the northwest corner of the Al-Aqsa Mosque Compound. To the left is the Dome of Solomon, in the center is the al-Ghawanima Minaret. The madrasa built by Sanjar al-Jawili is to the right of the minaret’s tip — the structure on the highest part of the wall with the two small domes. Image from the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

The al-Jawili Mosque, built by Emir Sanjar al-Jawili as an extension of the al-Ibrahimi Mosque at Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs. Photo by Yusuf al-Natsheh in Discover Islamic Art, Museum With No Frontiers, 2023. (Labels added.)

Sanjar was also an accomplished religious scholar, writing a respected compendium on Shafii jurisprudence. He was a patron of the scholars and artists. One of his favorite Mamluks (though they had a bitter falling out), Altunbugha al-Jawili, became a well-known poet, writing love poems to both sexes, like:

“I died a martyr for a gazelle, tame and pliant yet so uncaring / His cheek beneath his eyes’ sharp edge is paradise, but with a sword overhead dangling.”

When al-Nasir Mohammed died in 1341, the elderly Sanjar washed his body as well.

Sanjar’s last moment of glory came in battle. One of al-Nasir Mohammed’s sons, Ismail, was sultan, and another of his sons, Ahmed, was holed up in Karak Fortress in rebellion. Ismail sent multiple campaigns, but every one of them failed to take the fortress. Finally, he sent Sanjar at the head of an army. As Sanjar besieged Karak — where, a lifetime earlier as a young mamluk, he had served as a guard — Ahmed mocked him, shouting, “You cursed old man!” Sanjar roared back: “It’s time you meet your fate with this cursed old man.” He unleashed his catapults and siege weapons and knocked a hole in the fortress walls. Ahmed’s head was soon brought back to Cairo.

Sanjar died not long after in 1345 at nearly 90. He had never been as dramatic a character as his partner Salar, never as grasping or rapacious. But he succeeded in reaching a status and prestige Salar never did and left a far more more important physical legacy. Sanjar was a rare emir of whom they could write, “he lived a long life, happy and prosperous.”

He was buried under the dome of his mausoleum, next to that of his lifelong love.

The emirs’ domes seen from the Madrasa's interior courtyard

To see the inner courtyard, go further down Saliba Street, take the right before Ibn Tuloun Mosque, then the immediate next right. That alley leads up the plateau and eventually you wind your way through the neighborhood to the upper entrance of the mosque. Just beyond that, you reach a point where you can look down into the complex’s remains. It’s a tragic sight — this is one of the most unique and important Mamluk monuments but it’s in a criminal state of neglect, left open to the elements, broken and strewn with garbage.

But looking down into it, you can see how impressive it’s decoration once was. The site combined the mausoleum of the two emirs, plus a madrasa, plus a khanqah, or home for Sufis. The arcade under the arches has an amazing series of stone screens carved with arabesques. Along one of the remaining walls runs a beautiful band of calligraphy carved in gypsum with filigree interlaced with floral tendrils.

So... what was Sanjar and Salar’s relationship exactly?  

To call them gay, as an identity, would be an anachronism. That’s not to say same-sex desire and sex weren’t all over the place during the Mamluk era. Sultans and emirs were drawn to handsome young mamluks, poets wrote volumes of verses adoring the beauties of young men. None of this is seen as unusual in the writings of the time, even if religious scholars did denounce the sin of sodomy.

Their relationship is best understood in the context of the particular bonds among Mamluks, built from youth through their years of military training. One such bond was “khushdashiyya,” the sense of community among Mamluks who had all been owned by the same master _ like Salar and Sanjar were both originally owned by Qalawoun. In the ideal of khushdashiyya, all the Mamluks from one master were united in loyalty to him and loyalty to each other even after his death.

But khushdashiyya was often an ideal more than a reality. Sultan Qalawoun, for example, had as many as 12,000 Mamluks by one account -- and there couldn’t be a personal connection among all of them. Emirs once owned by the same masters turned against each other all the time.

There were closer connections within khushdashiya. A sultan usually had multiple barracks to house and train his Mamluks. Mutual loyalty among Mamluks from a single barrack proved much stronger over time.

In the barracks, we’re talking about young men torn from their families, living together and enduring sometimes brutal training together, so it’s natural a comradery would develop. Also, individual Mamluks within a barrack would form even closer emotional pairings, sometimes starting out as mentor and pupil and evolving into intimate friendship. They would be referred to as “brothers” for the rest of their lives. Salar himself talks to his "brotherhood" with Sanjar.

Nothing in the histories suggests these bonds were sexual. But it’s also it’s not crazy to think they might have been sometimes. It was a sexualized environment. It’s not for nothing that the sergeants who supervised the barracks were traditionally eunuchs. One of the sergeants’ many tasks, according to instruction manuals of the time, was to prevent Mamluks from sleeping in the same bed together.

Perhaps it’s easiest to throw them into the broad category of history’s romantic male friendships, from Achilles to Abraham Lincoln, where the actual level of physical intimacy runs the whole spectrum but can’t always be firmly known. No less important is Salar and Sanjar’s political connection, that of patron and client, where a more powerful emir gives benefits to a lower one in return for loyalty. As their final fates show, politics can overrule emotional bonds.

Salar and Sanjar’s contemporaries see nothing unusual in their relationship beyond noting its intensity. Whatever their relationship was, it wasn’t untypical of a “brotherhood” between two emirs. So what to make of the little signs of affection that come through the histories but are not reported between other “brothers”? Salar’s readiness to go to war for Sanjar goes above and beyond what any one emir might normally do for another. Decades after his partner’s death, Sanjar puts Salar’s name to a caravanserai. We can speculate about a whole mix of emotions behind that — enduring love? a show of respect? nostalgia for a long passed friendship? a guilty conscience?

And there’s the physical fact of this monument, unique even to its contemporaries. I don’t know of any other mausoleum built explicitly for two emirs unrelated by blood or marriage. Sometimes a client might be allowed to be entombed in a corner of his patron’s mausoleum.

Instead, here we have those two domes, side by side, cleaving close together — Sanjar’s almost imperceptibly smaller than Salar’s — and visible well down Saliba Street, like a proclamation.