Multi-tasking Structures:
The Mosque/Khanqah/Mausoleum/
Madrasa/Sabil of Sultan Qaytbay (1472)

July 18, 2006

An odd feature of Islamic architecture in Cairo is the tendency for buildings to take on more and more tasks. Structures that in their earliest manifestations stand separately are finally bundled together into one mega-religious complex. It is as if someone realized that there is a lot more spiritual bang for the buck if you just do everything at the same time.

This kind of combinatoriness (a word I believe my wife coined) is especially a mark of the Circassian Mamluk Period (1382-1517). Doris Behrens-Abouseif comments:

At the end of the fourteenth century, which corresponds to the beginning of the Circassian Mamluk period, a change had taken place in the function of religious institutions, the origins of which had already started under the Bahri Mamluks. This was the drawing together of various institutions into the multi-functional religious complex. The madrasa-jami' combination has already been mentioned in connection with Sultan Hasan. Under... Barquq, the complex included a khanqah as well, thus forming a madrasa-khanqah-jami'. Later the functions of both the madrasa and the khanqah were reduced, so that every Friday mosque is called a madrasa, even without a teaching curriculum, and they all... had Sufi rites, though the Sufis no longer had to live in them. The khanqah had lost its monastic character. [19]

This makes it sound as if a large part of the structural combinatoriness was a watering-down of the various individual functions. If khanqahs and madrasas were losing their distinctiveness, then their connection into a single structure would be relatively simple.

The religious complex of Sultan Qaytbay (built in the generation following the death of al-Maqrizi) is an example of this combinatoriness:

This is the main entrance to the religious complex of Qaytbay. The portal is striking with its striped style, and to the left is the barred grill representing a sabil from which water was dispensed. Above the sabil is the traditional Kuttab where young students were instructed in the Qur'an. We have already seen the sabil-kuttab as a stand-alone structure, but now it is artfully set next to the entrance to a major religious complex. What is new about this building is not any one design feature, but the way old parts are put together.

This time I got to walk into the sabil and see what it was like. The marble floor has a small opening from which water could be drawn up from the cistern. And from here the water could be dispensed to those who came to the iron grill.

The portal leads to the splendid mosque interior. The basic form is recognizable: a central court surrounded on four sides by an arch.. the qiblah side (above) being the most extensive and ornate of the sides. What is different is that the court is not open, but given a wooden ceiling and painted wooden lantern (see first picture, above).

The interior of the mosque is beautiful, as this detail shows. It is also laden with tacky modern lamps, lime-green prayers rugs, and all the other kitschy adornments that come with a mosque in a poor neighborhood. This is the interesting challenge of almost every visit to a medieval Islamic site.. one must see the mosque for what it is and try not to blame it for a bad lamp.

On the wall hung a picture of the Haram in Mecca:

This is one of those images that every visitor to a mosque must become familiar with.. identify instantly. It is an image of the geographical heart of Islam.. where every Muslim longs to visit. Photos and representations of all sorts, big or small, glossy or sun-dulled.. they are everywhere. Christian churches may have their iconography of Mary and the risen Christ.. but an image of Mecca is as close to an iconic image as Islam comes.

Through a door in the mosque and a short passage one comes to the mausoleum, lined with stained glass windows. It is here that Qaytbay himself was buried:

But the interior of the mausoleum pales when compared to the mastery of the dome itself.. which features an intricate stone pattern:

That is a dome that shows up often in illustrated books on Islamic art and architecture. Behrens-Abouseif has a discussion of the difficulty of working an abstract pattern onto a curving shape. A number of attempts went into finding a solution to this difficulty—attempts to which this dome represents a culmination:

The dome on the mausoleum attached to Qaytbay's mosque in the cemetery shows that the designer for the first time reversed these principles. Instead of basing the pattern on the principle of a star applied on a decreasing, or triangular, base to apex surface, the star was designed for a circular surface, the center of which is the apex of the dome. Of course, unlike a flat circular area, the dome surface has irregularities. In this case they met with the star pattern not near the apex, but nearer to the base of the dome, where the lines resulting from the central star at the apex have to be logically continued. Thus, the design of Qaytbay's dome is made from a bird's eye view... [23]

I won't even try to unpack all that. But it gives a sense of the hidden difficulty in designing a dome that stands so perfectly. It was not a matter of just making a lot of criss-crossing lines that met in stars, but the curves of the dome itself have to be considered.

Behrens-Abouseif continues:

This is perhaps the most beautiful carved stone dome in Cairo, and it seems to have discouraged any imitations. Afterwards, masons were content with repetitive geometric or floral patterns, such as those seen on the domes of... [24]

This dome also serves as a fitting conclusion to this look at a multi-tasking religious complex. The place for creativity has shifted from large scale generic changes, to the work of integrating multiple old forms into a single structure. Along with that effort came the perfection of earlier forms.. such as the beautiful solution to the question of the design of a dome.