In keeping with Mamluk custom, al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh was purchased by Sultan Al-Malik Az-Zahir Sayf ad-Din Barquq when he was ten or twelve years old.

As an adult, he served for ten years as the governor of Tripoli under an appointment by Sultan An-Nasir Naseer ad-Din Faraj.

Shaykh suffered so terribly from fleas and lice during his imprisonment, he vowed that he would transform the prison into "a saintly place for the education of scholars" if he ever came to power.

As sultan, al-Mu'ayyad led a number of successful campaigns to northern Syria, as well as fighting Turkoman neighbors in Anatolia.

The lavish endowment left by the sultan upon his death allowed the madrasa to hire the most eminent scholars of the day as professors.

The most famous Quranic specialist in Egypt, Ibn Hajar al-'Asqalani, lectured in Shafi'i jurisprudence at the madrasa.

A separate building for use as dormitories by Sufi students who studied at the madrasa were not immediately erected, despite an allocation of 20,000 dinars toward them.

[3] The mosque was intended as a funerary complex and for use in Friday prayers, but its greatest purpose was that of a madrasa for Sufi students, according to al-Maqrizi's story of its origins.

According to the mosque's original documents, the madrasa was to house fifty Hanafis, forty Shafi'is, fifteen Malikis, and ten Hanbalis, and their respective teachers and imams.

[2] This was the last grand portal built in the Mamluk period; it is framed with to the mosque is decorated with finely carved marble bands and kufic calligraphic script.

The main door is a masterpiece of bronze work taken from the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan, while the dome is a typical example of Mamluk stone masonry with a cylindrical base and carved zig-zag pattern.

The original facades were particularly tall for the period, due to the extra height added by the Fatimid towers at the base of the minarets.

The facades were decorated with two rows of windows, and shops beneath each wall of the mosque were added in the original plans and remain today.

The prayer hall includes two blind windows decorated either in the Andalusian or Moroccan style, one in a geometric pattern and the other in floral.

The visual style of the carved Kufic inscriptions dates it to the Fatimid period, meaning al-Mu'ayyad likely salvaged it from an earlier building.

The original fountain was said to have marble columns roofed with a gilded wooden dome above an awning, adding to the building's splendor.

Another three-story minaret stood at the Western portal on a side street; it collapsed in 1427 during Sultan Barsbay's reign and was immediately rebuilt.

[2] Ibrahim Pasha, the son of Muhammad 'Ali, oversaw restorations in the late 1830s and 1840s, including the installation of Turkish tiles in the qibla wall.