Sultan Qalawun built Cairo's great hospital with forced labour after a vow in a Damascus hospital funded by a captured European king's ransom

Nur al-Din built a hospital in Damascus in 1154. The historian al-Maqrizi wrote that it was paid for with the ransom of a captured European king, who gave four forts and 500,000 dinars for his release. Nur al-Din endowed it with medical books. Al-Maqrizi reports that Sultan Qalawun, ill in that hospital, vowed to build one like it. In 1284 and 1285 Qalawun built a hospital, mausoleum and school on the site of the old Fatimid palace in Cairo. Residents were evicted. Passers-by were reportedly forced to work, and Mongol prisoners of war were used. Other buildings were pulled down for materials. Some legal scholars ruled that prayer there was not permissible. The complex took 13 months; the hospital was finished first. Qalawun endowed it mainly with city property. Al-Maqrizi put the annual income at one million dirhams, most of it for the hospital. Later sultans added land, and a 1325 renovation cost almost 60,000 dinars. The hospital worked for more than 500 years, into the Ottoman period. The complex stands on al-Muizz Street.