The Doors of Sultan Barqūq and Their Inscriptions

The present study is a step towards establishing the precise relationship between three pairs of door-leaves related to Sultan Barqūq: those exhibited in Cairo Street at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago 1893; the door of Sultan Barqūq in the Tareq Rajab Museum, Kuwait; and the in situ door of the Sultan’s madrasa-mosque in the Coppersmiths’ Bazaar, Historic Cairo (henceforth Barqūqiyya). Some other doors connected to the Sultan will also be touched upon. Our investigation was undertaken in the context of research on Cairo Street in Chicago and in response to the appearance of Géza Fehérvári’s posthumous book on the door in Kuwait. Here, our focus is on a philological analysis of the inscription bands at the top and bottom of the doors. Given the outstanding rank of the Barqūqiyya and the door-leaves of its main entrance as monuments of Mamluk art and architecture and the amount of research devoted to Mamluk epigraphy in general, it has been a great surprise to discover that scholarship on the inscriptions of the in situ door is nothing but confused and that to date no accurate reading of the two inscription bands is available. This regrettable omission is intended to be corrected here.