Qa'a (reception hall of the Cairene house)

The qa'a is the main reception hall of a house, usually in the harem and often on the first floor; the loftiest room, it is roofed with a lantern or dome and sometimes lit by clerestory windows. ¹ It consists of a sunken central space, the durqa'a, flanked by two or four iwans furnished with divans and cupboards. ¹

One of the best and earliest examples is in the Bashtak palace (1334-1339) opposite Barquq's madrasa on al-Mu'izz street: a cruciform first-floor room reached by stairs, with two main iwans either side of a durqa'a that once held a fountain and two shallow side iwans behind triple arcades; each iwan has a coffered wooden roof, the durqa'a ceiling rises much higher as a lantern, and clerestory windows with mashrabiyya run above the arcades. ¹ The side iwans behind triple arcades appear a few years later in the mosque of Aslam al-Silahdar (1344-1345), an early mosque with a roofed cruciform court. ¹

Yeomans derives the roofed court of late Burji madrasas, such as Inal's, from the domestic qa'a rather than from Anatolia, though the madrasa of the amir al-Jukandar (1319), the first with a roofed court, had an Anatolian patron. ^{2 1} He ties this to a closer joining of religious foundation and residence, citing Hillenbrand's examples: the madrasa of the amir Mithqal (1361-1374), whose upper floor could be reached only through the amir's quarters, and the Ghannamiyya (1372), the house of Shakir ibn al-Ghannam turned into a madrasa by adding a mihrab and minaret. ² The rab', or apartment building, also passed from house to religious use, lodging the Sufis and staff of the Eastern Cemetery khanqahs. ^{1 3}