Revising a Mosque:
The Blue Mosque (1347 AD)

July 25, 2006

One of the enjoyable aspects of heading into Cairo with my driver Harby is the way my trips always end up different than I had imagined them. In the case of last Friday we ended up driving down Bab al-Wazir Street, taking a route to the Zuweila Gate which I had never seen. At one point we came to an old mosque which had its door open, and Harby told me to go see the Blue Mosque. Its more official name is the Mosque of Amir Aqsunqur, built in 1347, but in a way it deserves a new name since it was so extensively revised.

In 1654 the Ottoman official Ibrahim Agha added his own vision to the mosque. As Doris Behrens-Abouseif comments, this was hardly unusual:

In the Ottoman period, many sponsors of religious foundations restored old mosques that had fallen into decay or built upon their foundations and walls, rather than building new ones. Such mosques then acquired the name of the restorer, and this mosque, after restoration, was sometimes called the mosque of Ibrahim Agha. [116]

That seems an eminently practical solution to the reality of Cairo at that time: lots of old mosques, lots of decaying walls. So the Ottomans simply made it their business (often, but not always) to spend their resources updating and revising the mosques that were out there.

In this case, the mosque does not seem to be merely repaired, but to actually be a new mosque. Ibrahim Agha was even buried inside the mosque, in a closed room that is beautifully lined with Iznak tiling. The prior Mamluk prince who originally built the mosque is also buried nearby.. but you would hardly stop to look at his final resting place.. it is crumbling. The main show here and elsewhere is in the beautiful re-visioning.

Most spectacularly, the entire qiblah wall of the mosque (which is extensive) is covered with Iznak tiles. The first picture (above) is a detail from this wall. It is not hard to see why the mosque was nicknamed the "Blue Mosque." This is the most extensive use of tiling that I have yet seen in Cairo, although Behrens-Abouseif notes:

The Cairo craftsmen were not quite familiar with the art of tile paneling, and the tiles are inexpertly applied to the walls. [116]

This inexpertise may be part of the reason the mosque has suffered a lot of damage in earthquakes. There are portions of the wall where the tiling has obviously fallen down.

This mention of earthquakes brings up another variety of revising:

Also noticeable in this mosque is the modern attempt at stabilizing and restoring the structure. There are steel braces everywhere. I imagine that at some point in the future this mosque, like others, will get a complete facelift and be tidied up for tourists (although there were several on the day I visited.. throwing the lone custodian into a bit of confusion):

In some ways these modern repairs are a further revision, and the mosque takes on yet another layer of history. I wonder if in a thousand years such repairs, aimed perhaps at preparing a touristy version of Islamic Cairo, will seem similar to the Ottoman practice of repairing and revising mosques. From that distant vantage what will be obvious is how decisively changes were made to conform to contemporary expectations.. to what people wanted the Islamic past to be.

One element I have not talked about enough in these blogs is how they look from the street. Here is a street view of the blue mosque and its minaret. The mosques of Cairo (except the earliest) were not laid out in the open, where people could walk around and see all four sides. They stood on narrow streets and were designed to be seen by those passing by.

The street orientation was also often at odds with the necessity of having the prayer niche face Mecca, which meant that the square court inside the mosque was often at an odd angle with the street itself. Looking down from the minaret of the Blue Mosque you can see the strange angle clearly:

To the right is the courtyard of the mosque, while to the left is the street itself. The angles have nothing to do with each other. A big part of mosque design (in Cairo) is how to finesse this difference between street layout and the obligatory wall facing Mecca. The entrances are designed so that almost insensibly the visitor is reoriented from the street to the central court of the mosque.

I end with another detail of the Iznak tiles because these are some of my favorite artistic products from the Middle East.. and I want it known that if I were ever to collect something from the Middle East besides books.. it might well be Turkish tiles.