Bimaristan Nur al-Din, Syria

The digital documentation of Bimaristan Nur al-Din was part of Project Anqa, a collaboration between CyArk, the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), and Carleton University with funding support from the UK based charity, Arcadia Foundation. Responding to the catastrophic loss of heritage in the Middle East, the project seeks to further protect monuments through training local heritage professionals in digital preservation techniques. In partnership with the UNESCO Office for Safeguarding Syrian Cultural Heritage, CyArk trained Syrian heritage professionals in Lebanon to carry out the digital documentation of six sites in Damascus, including Bimaristan Nur al-Din.

The bismaristan contains four iwans, or vaulted spaces set back from a wall, laid out in axial symmetry. The largest iwan was used as a lecture and meeting hall. Students could gather in the space to learn from renowned physicians and access medical texts to study from. Two storage spaces encased within the walls of the iwan were used as built-in bookcases for the many medical books donated by Nur al-Din to the bimaristan. The space features a marble dado rail, a type of moulding fixed to the wall around the perimeter of a room, decorated in passages from the Qur’an. The passages, quotes about medicine and healing, both reflected the building’s purpose and acted as a blessing for the bimaristan.