Shrine of Lady Zumurrud Khatun

The Shrine of Lady Zubaida or Zumurrud Khatun Mosque is one of the famous ancient archaeological shrines in Iraq, located in the Sheikh Ma'ruf Cemetery in the Karkh side of Baghdad.

Near the shrine is the grave of Aisha Khatun, mother of Ahmad Pasha, Governor of Baghdad, and wife of Hasan Pasha, the governor during the Ottoman era.

Zumurrud Khatun was a Turkish slave girl who came from eastern Turkestan to Baghdad and occupied her place in the Abbasid palace until she captivated Caliph Al Mustadi Billah with her beauty. He freed her and then married her in 552 AH/1157 CE.

She bore him his son, Crown Prince Ahmad, who later became Caliph of the Muslims under the name Ahmad Al Nasir Li Din Allah.

Zumurrud Khatun lived twenty-four years during her son's caliphate. She was known for righteousness and performing many charitable works. She endowed schools, Sufi lodges (ribats), and mosques, and during her pilgrimage journey in 553 AH/1158 CE, she spent approximately 300,000 dinars on the poor and needy.

After the death of Al Mustadi Ai Amr Allah in 575 AH/1180 CE, Zumurrud Khatun devoted herself to charitable works, almsgiving, and caring for orphans and the poor. During the pilgrimage season, she customarily distributed money to pilgrims and took care of wells and pilgrims' rest stops.

Zumurrud Khatun undertook the construction of a mosque, Islamic school, and shrine for herself near the shrine of Ma'ruf Al Karkhi, and designated endowments whose income would fund positions for teaching the Shafi'i school of jurisprudence.

The school was opened in 589 AH/1193 CE, and she ordered that Fakhr Al Din Al Nufani Al Shafi'i be its teacher.

Zumurrud Khatun's school was described as one of Baghdad's greatest schools. Teaching continued there for the remainder of the Abbasid era and throughout the Mongol and Jalayirid periods, with its structure remaining standing until the Ottoman era. However, the school eventually vanished and nothing remains of its traces.

The construction was extremely solid because it was built with brick and plaster, and its walls were also covered with plaster from the inside, so it resisted destructive factors and remains standing to this day.

The mosque consists of a conical dome of magnificent appearance and towering height, standing on eight sides in the Seljuk architectural style. Its exterior resembles a pine cone, and its interior is an artistic masterpiece among the rarities of Islamic architectural art during the Abbasid state.

The conical dome reaches approximately thirteen meters in height. The eight walls were decorated with brick ornamentations in the form of panels filling large squares, further accentuated by their protrusion from the wall surface. Other decorations include brick pieces with geometric shapes, some in the form of eight-pointed stars.

The building is covered by a distinctive muqarnas (stalactite) dome of nine layers topped by a small cupola. This dome is considered the oldest surviving example of its kind in Baghdad.

The muqarnas was designed to shade the openings and apertures that illuminate the dome from within, according to engineers and architects specializing in Islamic conical domes.

Zumurrud Khatun's dome is considered the most beautiful embodiment of conical domes in Iraq, combining architectural and decorative elements that represent a qualitative leap in architectural arts between the generations preceding and following this authentic art form.

The mosque's minaret, built during the Seljuk era, is considered one of the oldest minarets in Baghdad.

A mosque dedicated to funeral prayers was built near the grave and became known as Lady Zubaida Mosque or Zumurrud Khatun Mosque. The mosque was completely demolished in 1195 AH, and Sulayman Pasha rebuilt it in 1200 AH.

According to what was recorded in one of its corners, the shrine building was restored and developed several times, including in the years 288 and 599 AH. An inscription on the shrine door states that Minister Ghiyath Al Din Rashid Al Din renewed the blessed shrine's construction in 735 AH/1334 CE, leading researchers to conclude that the site has been restored more than twenty times from the Abbasid period until 2000 CE.

Zumurrud Khatun died in 599 AH/1202 CE. A large number of Baghdad's people came out for her funeral, and she was buried in the tomb she had built for herself near the ascetic Sheikh Ma'ruf Al Karkhi. People mourned her deeply.

Zumurrud Khatun Mosque, with its unique conical muqarnas dome, remains a living witness to the splendor of Seljuk Abbasid architecture and a prominent landmark among Baghdad's historical monuments, extending its life for more than eight centuries.