Siqaya of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, Masjid al-Haram

The Siqaya of al-Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib (may God be pleased with him) heads the list of Mecca's sabils; it stood between the well of Zamzam to the east and the Kaaba, was built under the Abbasid caliph al-Mahdi (158-169 AH), and was repaired and renewed in 200 AH by order of Husayn ibn Hasan al-Alawi, in 229 AH by al-Wathiq, in 706 AH by al-Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun, and again in 807 AH. ¹ Al-Haddad counts it a unique and rare type in the architecture of sabils generally and of the Hijaz in particular. ²

The earliest description is al-Azraqi's, as the author quotes it: a rectangle of twenty-four by nineteen cubits, its walls with columns and teak panels between, eight cubits high, crowned by forty-six merlons, with two doors, one facing the Kaaba, and six basins fed by water running in a lead pipe from the Zamzam chamber. ^{3 4} The author thinks this plan has no known parallel among the siqayas of the Islamic lands. ⁴ Its merlons were pulled down on al-Alawi's order in 200 AH, Mubarak al-Tabari restored the teak panels, and under al-Wathiq in 229 AH its form was changed, according to al-Azraqi. ⁴

Al-Fasi described it in his day as a square house under a large brick dome set in lime, with iron grilles low in its walls overlooking the mosque, two marble basins on the north side flanking the door, and inside a large pool filled from Zamzam by a spout-like timber and an underground channel ending in a fountain at its centre; the dome was rebuilt in 807 AH / 1404 after termites ate the wooden dome and it fell. ⁴ The author thinks the work of 807 AH changed nothing essential except replacing the wooden dome with a brick one, and that the domed-house type is rare among sabils, its best-known parallel being Qaytbay's sabil in Jerusalem (887 AH / 1482). ⁵ Ibn Jubayr saw and described this phase in 580 AH / 1184. ²