The complex is made up of a college (madrasa), mausoleum, water trough (hawd), and a primary school (maktab).

[2] She was concubine then wife to Husayn (Sha'ban's father), a son of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad who never rose to the throne.

When Husayn died in 1362, she married the amir Uljay al-Yusufi (who built his own madrasa in the nearby Suq al-Silah street).

[1] Sha'ban commissioned this madrasa and mausoleum in 1368-69 (770 AH) reportedly to honour his mother who was on pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca at the time.

However, given his young age (15) at the time, there is a fair chance that the decision to build the madrasa was in accordance with his mother's own wishes, especially as there are few other examples of such impressive monuments being built for the female relatives of Mamluk sultans.

[2] In 1375 Sha'ban founded and embarked on the construction of his own ambitious mosque, madrasa, and mausoleum complex in 1375, on the location of what is now the Maristan of al-Mu'ayyad, at the northwestern foot of the Citadel.

The complex he had begun to build was eventually dismantled by Sultan Faraj ibn Barquq in 1411 in order to reuse its materials for a number of other buildings including the so-called Zawiya of Faraj ibn Barquq, located in front of Bab Zuweila, and the madrasa-mosque of his emir Jamal al-Din Ustadar.

[2] Some excellent illuminated manuscripts of the Qur'an date from Sha'ban's reign and it is believed that this madrasa may have contained a workshop for producing them.

[8] According to Ibn al-Ji'an, there were two Egyptian properties tied to the madrasa's endowment and its founder, Khawand Baraka.

The first was the district of Saft Abi Turab in the province of al-Gharbiyya was endowed for the Madrasa of Umm al-Sultan Sha'ban.

Like many Mamluk buildings, the entrance is set in a recess within the exterior walls, the top of which is crowned with a muqarnas (stalactite or honeycomb-like carvings).

On the left is a delicately carved wooden screen which is part of the sabil, a kiosk that dispensed water freely.

On the right was a drinking trough (Arabic: hawd) for animals, above which is a carved inscription band with the epigraphic blazon or cartouche of Sultan Sha'ban.

[2][1] The entrance portal leads to a long stone-vaulted passage with the madrasa and its central courtyard on the left and some annexes on the right.

A monumental inscription runs along the top of the courtyard's walls, above the openings of the iwans, and features a verse of the Qur'an (3:190-192, from the Surah Ali 'Imran[10]).