How much is left of its interior is not accurately known, but it is to be feared that a good deal has fallen to ruin. On the west side of the Haram al-Sherif is the great Ashrafieh madrasa, the upper part of which is unfortunately in ruins. Its splendid fan-vaulted entrance porch still stands. This madrasa was built in 1480 by the Sultan Kait Bai, whose fine tomb in Cairo is so well known to every visitor.
The many hostels and colleges built in Jerusalem during the thirteenth, fourteenth and fifteenth centuries show that in those centuries Jerusalem was a city affording opportunities for study to large numbers of people, who doubtless came from all over the Moslem world to visit the holy sites and to gain learning. Each of these colleges was endowed with land, whose revenues went to their support. To discover the land allotted to the maintenance of each college would provide an interesting study and might result in the provision of the money needed for their repair and re-establishment as seats of learning.
Soon after the opening of the sixteenth century the Mamelukes fell before the power of the Ottoman Turks. For a few years after the Ottoman conquest, energy continued to be spent upon building. The Dome of the Rock was repaired and retiled; the gates and walls were repaired and rebuilt. The Damascus Gate in its upper part is of this time (1537). A number of sebils (fountains) were constructed in the year 1536. But this energy was ephemeral. A great period had come to an end. The Ottoman had arrived. The world was changing. The Cape route to India had been discovered, and those who held Egypt and Syria could no longer grow rich on the dues extracted at Alexandria and Alexandretta from merchants engaged in trading in Far Eastern and Indian goods in transit for European ports.
Of later date than the sixteenth century there is hardly any building in Palestine worthy of note. But mention may be made of the Mosque at Acre built by ʾAbdallah al-Jezzar in the eighteenth century. It is a charming domed building of the Turkish type and is set in delightful
