Build a Mosque and They Will Come:
The Mosque of Sultan al-Zahir Baybars (1266-69)

July 28, 2006

The mosque of Sultan al-Zahir Baybars is large. It was not built along a narrow busy street, but laid out square in an open space. Even now it forms a kind of natural midan, or square, around which traffic flows. The mosque was the first large mosque constructed by the ascendant Bahri Mamluks, and it sticks out alone to the north of old Cairo. An article by John Alden Williams entitled "Urbanization and Monument Construction in Mamluk Cairo" (Muqarnas 2 (1984), pgs. 33-45) tries to answer why this mosque was built in the first place:

All this meant that the city was being pulled to develop toward the southeast. Baybars I briefly arrested this trend by developing an area to the north of Fatimid Cairo... The suburb around the great congregational mosque and a palace he built before 1270 was also called Hussayniyya. The creation of a new royal quarters or suburbs was always a highly lucrative affair for Muslim monarchs: the land was bought cheap and sold dear, and new royal markets brought in high revenues as merchants and notables moved to the desirable new area. [35]

This makes mosque building sound something like building a freeway in California. Once a freeway is planned, property that had been in the boonies is suddenly valuable.. and all kinds of opportunities present themselves for people willing to get in on the ground floor of a new development. Muslim rulers did not build freeways, they built new royal mosques.. and the people came.

As it turns out, this area was not a success in the long run:

The growth of the southern area checked development in Husayniyya, and after the Black Death (1347-49) the northern suburb seems to have been deserted, and by 1403 abandoned. [36]

That explains why on a map of the medieval monuments of Cairo, this mosque stands almost by itself in the north. It was the seed of a new district which in the long run went to ruin.

The mosque itself is today not in great shape. The central courtyard is overgrown with tall grass:

And as one walks over to the qiblah side of the mosque, there are rows of columns standing in a ruined state, their roof having long disappeared:

After being in so many mosques which are at some stage of restoration, it was fascinating to see what happens when a mosque simply "goes natural" and is left to fend for itself. When I look through the books of drawings and photographs on medieval mosques, I am often struck by how dilapidated they once looked. This mosque is probably a pretty good indication of the state of many medieval mosques as they limped into the modern period. Some found renewal with Ottoman patrons.. but others simply disintegrated year after year.

The mosque of Sultan al-Zahir Baybars is still in use. A portion of it has a covering and has been turned into a somewhat makeshift place of worship. As I walked around I was surprised to see what looked like a cabin:

I looked behind it, and it was not very wide.. but when I walked in front of that door, three men suddenly popped up and donned their gelabiyyas to greet the visitor. Evidently, then, this is the living quarter for the men in charge of the upkeep of the mosque.

The guy on the left was blind, the guy on the right wanted me to sit down and read the Qur'an with them. I obliged for a few minutes, and showed that I could read it (although obviously not like a professional). They were impressed and I felt like I had won my spurs. They were also just trying to keep me busy and occupied so I would feel the need to tip them. But they got around to showing me the prayer niche.. which was oddly absent from the place of worship.

The prayer niche was in the ruined area of the mosque.. and is now bare of any ornament. Note also the water marks on the bricks.. which looks to me like water leeching.. something that will slowly destroy this building.

This area in front of the prayer niche was once quite brilliant. Doris Behrens-Abouseif notes a distinguishing feature:

the space ...instead of being roofed with a ceiling like the rest of the mosque, or covered by a small one-bay dome as in earlier mosques, was covered with a dome as large as that of Imam Shafi'a... The dome of Baybars, made of wood, disappeared long ago. Baybars ordered the dome to be built and decorated with the wood and marble he brought as trophies from the citadel of Yaffa, captured from the Crusaders. The dome thus commemorated Baybar's victory and the triumph of Islam. [94]

But all that is gone, and the sun falls freely on this ground.

The outside of the mosque is marked by three monumental portals, decorated with medallions and other designs over the entrance. One important model for this ornamented style is the al-Aqmar mosque (which seems like the model for everything).

This mosque also features the first occurrence of the ablaq, or striped, style:

Another notable feature of this mosque is the use of ablaq masonry, striped courses of light and dark stone, at one of the entrances. According to Creswell, this is the earliest extant example of ablaq, which becomes typical in later Cairene architecture. [94]

The entrance she is referring to is pictured above.. where one can make out the use of stripes on the lower levels.

It is a curious mosque.. one that attracts few visitors.. and since it does not appear to be on anyone's restoration agenda, who knows what its future will be.