Tripoli - Hammam Al Nuri
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The Hammam
al-Nuri is said to have been built sometime around 1333 by the same
unidentified Nur al-Din who built the Madrasah Nuriyyah. Unused since 1970,
it has begun to deteriorate. There is no founding inscription.
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A complex entrance that leads indirectly to the hammam both to
provide privacy and to avoid drafts; a cruciform changing room with
raised mastabahs and an octagonal fountain, a cold area, a warm
area, and a hot complex. The Hammam al-Nuri is dominated by two
areas, the changing room and the hot room; the cold and warm rooms
simply link the other two.
The mashlah,
or changing room, is gigantic compared with the others; it covers almost half
the space occupied by the bath, with iwans as deep as rooms and central dome
raised by a vertical cupola whose skylight constitutes a dome by itself.
All that can
be said for certain is that the hammam as it now stands "with its large mashlah
with an octagonal fountain and a large hot room with numerous maqsurahs" was
already standing in 1700 when al-Nabulsi visited Tripoli and went to the Hammam
al-Nuri for a bath. How long it has been functioning before that is not known.
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