- Floor
- The upper floor
- Standing
- Three walls, the mihrab, a domed chamber
- The rare feature
- A double arcade on the outside
- Looking over
- The Euphrates
The upper floor carries a distinguished building at its centre and, near it, a small mosque. Three of the mosque's walls stand, with a mihrab in the qibla wall and a domed chamber attached; the main roof is partly down.
Its unusual feature is on the outside. The mosque had a double arcade along its exterior, opening over the Euphrates. Mosques are almost never built this way — the arcades belong in the courtyard, facing in. The other well-known example of an exterior arcade like this is in the Alhambra, in Spain.
The effect is easy to imagine and hard to forget: a prayer hall on the top of a fortified rock, with an open colonnade on its outer face, and the river running below it. Whoever designed it decided that this particular view was worth building for.
The mihrab survives, cut plain in good ashlar, a semicircular niche under a semi-dome.