The Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad (1318-35 AD)

June 22, 2006

The citadel also contains a beautiful mosque, built by Sultan Nasir Muhammad, one of the Bahri Mamluks whose long and prosperous reign marks a high point of Egyptian medieval history.. before the plague strikes in the mid-14th century and drastically lowers the population.

Maqrizi gives a short notice about the mosque:

This mosque at the citadel was built by king Nasir Muhammad ibn Qalawun in the year 718 AH. Previously in this place had been an old mosque and beside it the kitchen of three earlier sultans. So Nasir destroyed all that and made use of it in this mosque. He made it the most splendid structure and worked inside it a lot of glorious colored marble, along with an exalted dome. He made upon it an enclosure [maqsurah] from iron, wondrous of craftsmanship. In the front of the mosque there was another enclosure of iron, designed for the prayer of the Sultan. So when its construction was completed, the Sultan sat in it by himself and called upon all of the official callers [to prayer] in Cairo and Fustat, along with all the preachers and [Quran] readers. He ordered the preachers, and each of them gave a sermon in front of him. The callers [to prayer] stood and gave their call and the readers read [from the Quran]. Then Nasir chose the preacher Jamal al-Din Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn al-Hasan al-Qastalani as the preacher of his new mosque. He chose 20 callers [to prayer], appointing them in [the mosque]. He set for it readers of the lessons and a reader of the Holy Book. He also set for it in the way of dedicated properties whatever was superfluous of his expenditures. So it became the most exalted of the mosques of Egypt, and the greatest of them. To this day it is here that the Sultan of Egypt prays the Friday prayer and where the Chief Judge of the Shafi'ites preaches and prays on behalf of the people. [2: 325]

There is a qualitative difference between the kind of information available to an archeologist, and that available to someone working with texts. I always think the textual scholar gets the best deal. There is plenty of interesting imformation to be gleaned from the material remains of a site.. but there is nothing that adds life to a site like language. In this case we get the enjoyable spectacle of an audition for all the preachers and prayer-callers and Quran-readers of Cairo.. the winner getting a royal appointment in the new mosque. This is where I find Maqrizi enjoyable.. adding details of life to enliven what is otherwise just stones.

The minarets of the mosque are striking, both for the zig-zag pattern on the stone and for the green, white, and blue tiling on its top. It is a unique decorative strategy.. and Doris Behrens-Abouseif has a nice summary of the reason:

We know that a craftsman from Tabriz came to Cairo during the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad and that he built other minarets covered with faience, as was then the fashion in Persia. Not only the faience mosaic technique, but also the bulb shape, seems to have come from Tabriz. [109]

The original dome covered with green tiles fell down in the 16th century.. This is a later replacement which manages to give some sense of the original look.

In the 16th century the Ottomans (who took over in 1517) also carted off most of the marble from the citadel. So the "glorious colored marble" that is praised by Maqrizi is mostly gone. On a couple of walls there were some ruined remains of what the originally rich marbled interior must have looked like:

Not too much left there.. admittedly.

The columns inside the mosque are one of its most memorable aspects.. In front of the qiblah there are quite large columns constructed out of Aswan granite. It is rare to be in an Egyptian mosque and to be struck by the magnitude of the columns.. which is a common feeling in Egyptian temples. But this time the mosque's columns really are huge. There is a good reason for that: they were taken from an ancient Egyptian temple somewhere.

These large columns were not the only items pilfered from earlier structures. Note the small column in the rear of the picture above.. it is different, and seeminly jerry-rigged to fit into its position. That is the case with many of the smaller columns: they all look a little different. The reason again being that they have been removed from their original context.

The two capitals above again highlight the mix-matched interior style of this mosque. Both of these capitals are Coptic designs, the one on the right even featuring a cross! These were both once part of a church.. but then re-used in this mosque.

I am of course sad about the loss of Egyptian temples and Coptic churches.. but this mosque has a quite pleasing feel to it. It sins against our taste for uniformity of style.. (when Muhammad 'Ali constructed his large mosque in the 19th century, it was all uniformity).. But allowing a structure to be pieced together.. and letting the various influences have their own voice, seems like a unique part of medieval Islamic structures.. and literature, at that. Remember also that Persian tiling up on the minarets and the dome!