Building of the Mosque of Repentance at al-Uqayba, 632

In 632 AH al-Malik al-Ashraf Musa ibn al-ʿAdil began to convert the Zanjari caravanserai into a mosque, called the Mosque of Repentance (Jami al-Tawba), at al-ʿAqibiyya in Damascus. The caravanserai had been known for vice, wrongdoing and wine, so he named it the Mosque of Repentance and endowed it with many endowments ¹.

Its name refers to what the place had been before the mosque, a caravanserai where wine and vice gathered, so the name points to a reversal of meaning: "repentance" became a visible building in Damascus rather than mere words. The Ashrafi works in Damascus show the same approach. He also built the Ashrafiyya house of hadith, the mosque of Abu al-Darda in the citadel of Damascus, the reed mosques, the mosques of Jarrah and Bayt al-Anbar, and Harasta ².