Throughout its history, Cairo has been known as the City of a Thousand Minarets. Old Cairo is particularly steeped in Islamic heritage and it is assumed that worshippers come and go continually.
However, one mosque located in Bab el-Wazir Street, Al-Darb Al-Ahmar neighbourhood is an exception. No prayers are performed there and no call to prayer has been heard in it since it was built in 1502.
This is the mosque of Khayr Bey, the Mamluk prince who betrayed his army, bringing defeat by the Ottomans to the Mamluks and the end of their 300-year reign. Even so, this mosque is a tourist attraction and a witness to the architectural heritage without the echo of a single prayer.
Khayr Bey was a Circassian Mamluk from Karaj near Georgia. When he grew up, his father sold him to Sultan Qaytbay (1468-1496) and later he joined the Mamluk Sultanate. He served in the army and reached the rank of lieutenant colonel. He acquired one hundred slaves and could levy one thousand in time of war.
During the reign of the Mamluk Sultan al-Ghuri (1501-1516) he was appointed governor of Aleppo, where he remained until the Ottomans came to Egypt in 1517. In that year, Sultan Selim I, also known as Selim the Grim, seized control of Egypt, making it an Ottoman province.
Aya Waleed, PhD researcher in Archaeology and Islamic Arts, Faculty of Archaeology, Fayoum University, told the Egyptian Mail that Khayr Bey was nicknamed by Egyptians as Khayen (Arabic for traitor), because he helped the Ottomans invade Egypt by betraying Sultan al-Ghuri in the battle of Marj Dabiq, 44 kilometres north of Aleppo, in 1516, when he was the commander of the right flank of the army.
“Khayr retreated, withdrawing his forces and then joined the Ottoman army, throwing al-Ghouri’s army into confusion and finally resulting in its defeat,” Waleed said.
“Sultan Selim I expressed his gratitude by making him governor of Egypt,” she added. The Khayr Bey Complex consists of a mosque, a burial dome and a magnificently decorated sabil (water dispensary).
The mosque/madrasa consists of four orthogonal iwans (vaulted spaces open on one side to the courtyard) and a courtyard covered with a dome. In the middle of the southern iwan are a mihrab (niche in the wall indicating the direction of prayer) and a beautifully made wooden pulpit. In the northern iwan opposite the mihrab are shelves on two levels on which religious books are preserved.
Adjacent to the madrasa are two tombs: a large resting place topped with an onion-shaped dome and a smaller one with a shallow dome based on spherical pendentives, which are triangular segments of a spherical surface. This tomb is topped with a minaret of three floors on a square base.
This madrasa contains two flights of stairs that spiral around the minaret from the inside. Attached to the madrasa’s southeastern side is a sabil, a charitable donation in the Mamluk era.
But why are no prayers performed here? “There is a deviation in the direction of the mihrab. It does not point exactly to Mecca, so this mosque was deemed unsuitable as a place of prayer,” Waleed said.
Not only was he treacherous, but also some sources said Khayr was an unjust ruler, who went as far as to abolish holidays and celebrations.
“In 1522, Khayr fell ill and was bedridden. He began to give alms, pardon prisoners, distribute gifts to the poor, and asked people to pray for him,” Waleed added.
“After his death, the sounds of torture were said to have been heard from his the burial site, but such an account cannot be confirmed with certainty,” she said.
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