Flocks of birds overhead, on the floor, or drinking from a fountain lend a spiritual tranquillity to the Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah Mosque, which recently opened its doors to visitors and worshippers after a six-year closure for restoration.
Located at the end of Moezz Street near Bab el-Futuh, the mosque was named after the sixth Fatimid caliph (985-1021), who completed the structure in 1013 after the death of his father Fatimid Caliph al-Aziz, who began constructing it 23 years earlier.
Antiquities inspector Mohamed Khalil told the Egyptian Mail that this mosque resembles Tunisia’s Great Mosque of Kairouan, built by Arab general Uqba ibn Nafi in 670 AD.
The mosque is the largest after that of Ahmed ibn Tulun. The entrance is reminiscent of a pharaonic temple. Two minarets flank the facade.
The portico of the qibla, which indicates the direction a Muslim should face for prayer, has three domes.
In the Ayyubid era, the founder of the dynasty Saladin asked the sheikhs to issue a fatwa forbidding prayer in two mosques in the same city, Cairo. At that time there were the Al-Hakim and Al-Azhar mosques. As a result, Al-Azhar was closed for nearly 80 years of the Ayyubid reign.
In the time of the Bahriyya Mamluks, a dynasty of mostly Turkic origin that ruled from 1250 to 1382, a huge earthquake hit the mosque in 1302 during the reign of Al-Malik an-Nasir Mohamed ibn Qalawun. The top of the stone-made minarets collapsed. The whole mosque was renovated by Sultan Baibars al-Jashankir (1309-1310), who built the top of the minarets in mud brick in the shape of a censer, resembling his khanqah’s minaret in Gamaliya district.
The mosque fell into neglect. During the French expedition (1798–1801), the minarets were used as look-outs, Khalil said.
Egyptian political leader Omar Makram (1750-1822) later renovated the mosque and covered the qibla with marble and added a minbar (pulpit).
Part of the mosque’s qibla portico was used as a museum of Islamic art known as the House of Arab Antiquities before the Museum of Islamic Art was built in 1903. Later it was used as an elementary school called El-Selehdar.
Khalil said the mosque roused great interest during the time of President Anwar el-Sadat when the Bohra community demanded its restoration in 1980. The remnants of the original decorations are still there: stucco carvings and Qur’anic inscriptions.
They replaced the stone which covered the floor with white marble, he said.
During the restoration, they found a cistern in the open courtyard built by Sultan an-Nasir Hassan, who built his great mosque near the Citadel. The Bohra community renovated this cistern in a new technique and used it for ablutions.
In time, the walls of the mosque suffered from dampness. It was restored in the latest restoration process also made by the Bohra community under the supervision of the Supreme Council of Antiquities. The lighting system is also renovated.
Khalil said that there are many strange tales told about Al-Hakim. One of them is that he prevented women from going out in the daylight in Ramadan for not tempting men. He allowed them to go out at night on condition that she would have a boy carrying a lantern walking in front of her to light the way for her, so the passers-by knew that there was a woman in the street, so they would pave the way for her and avert their eyes.
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