Gaza
Qasr al-Basha, the Pasha's Palace, is the Mamluk and Ottoman palace of Gaza's old city. Its ground floor was built under Sultan Baybars in the thirteenth…
Qasr al-Basha, the Pasha's Palace, is the Mamluk and Ottoman palace of Gaza's old city. Its ground floor was built under Sultan Baybars in the thirteenth century, and his emblem of two lions facing each other was carved on the façade. Local tradition says Baybars built it as a home for the family he married into in Gaza. The upper floor was added under the Ottomans, when the palace became the fortified seat of the Radwan governors and later pashas of Gaza, with a mosque, armoury and granary inside. Napoleon spent three nights here in 1799, which is why it is also called Napoleon's Fort. It later served as a police station and a girls' school, and in recent years it was restored as a museum of Gaza's archaeology.