Mosque of Ibn Tulun

The Mosque of Ibn Tulun is the oldest mosque in Egypt that survives largely in its original form, and one of the largest in Egypt by area: with its outer enclosure it covers more than 26,000 square metres. It was built between 876 and 879 by Ahmad ibn Tulun, the Abbasid governor who made himself effectively independent ruler of Egypt, as the congregational mosque of his new capital, al-Qata'i, a short distance northwest of the older town of Fustat. It stands on a low rise called Gebel Yashkur, the Hill of Thanksgiving, where local legend says Noah's Ark came to rest after the Flood. Of Ibn Tulun's city, the mosque is essentially all that remains.

Its style came from Iraq. Ibn Tulun had spent much of his early career in Samarra, the Abbasid capital on the Tigris, and the mosque repeats Samarra's language: walls of red brick faced with plaster, broad pointed arches resting on massive piers rather than columns, and bands of carved stucco with floral and geometric patterns running around the arches and the 128 windows. An outer enclosure, the ziyada, wraps the mosque on three sides, once holding washrooms and even a clinic, and isolates the sanctuary from the noise of the city. The parapets are crowned with an openwork cresting whose shapes are often compared to a row of linked human figures. Beneath the ceiling a wooden frieze nearly two kilometres long carries verses of the Qur'an in Kufic script. Tradition names the architect as a Christian, and whether or not that is true, the building is remarkable for its restraint: the vast open courtyard, the repetition of arches and the play of light and shadow do all the work.

In the courtyard stands a domed ablution fountain added by the Mamluk sultan Lajin in 1296: he had hidden in the mosque while fleeing an assassination plot, and once on the throne he repaid it with a major restoration. The minaret, with its external staircase winding around the upper part, echoes the spiral minarets of Samarra; in its present form it probably also dates from Lajin's restoration, though its history is debated. A story tells that Ibn Tulun, absent-mindedly twisting a strip of parchment around his finger, gave his builders its shape. The climb rewards with a view over the mosque's roofs and the domes and minarets of historic Cairo. At the southeastern corner, on the site of Ibn Tulun's former palace, two mansions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries now house the Gayer-Anderson Museum.

Getting there

The mosque stands in historic Cairo, about 4 km from the modern city centre. Cairo International Airport (CAI) is about 17 km away. The Gayer-Anderson Museum at the mosque's corner is easily combined with the visit.