Who Was “Tree of Pearls”?

Shajar a-Durr was a rare individual who rose from slavery to become sultan of Egypt. Her achievements stand at the interconnection of politics, slavery, gender, and architecture. Contemporary observers portray her as a perceptive, strategic, and forceful decision maker. Moreover, her works of architecture testify to her values and ambitions as a patron. In their unusual urban location, relationship to the street and to the buildings around them, structure and unusual dome profiles, and inventive ornament and inscriptions, her buildings reveal a great deal about the person and the transitional age in which she lived. She was an unusual personage who did not conform to ordinary standards, and her architecture was similarly extraordinary.