Gleanings from Maqrizi III:
A Sultan Orders a Mosque

August 25, 2009

Three years ago I wrote a post about the Mosque of al-Zahir Baybars in Cairo. It's an infrequently visited mosque since it lies well to the north of standard Islamic Cairo. The mosque is currently moldering away, but it was ambitiously constructed and the first monumental construction of the Mamluk period, built by the Sultan whose lengthy and vigorous reign—from 1260-77 AD—settled the Mamluk system into place.

Most every mosque in Cairo is known by the title of its builder, who was inevitably a ruler or very high official. A mosque in Cairo thus functioned as a lasting tribute to the person who built it. But to what extent did a Sultan participate in the design of a mosque? Or was the entire process delegated to a specialist? Maqrizi's description of this mosque gives an unusually clear—and probably accurate—depiction of the relationship between Sultan and mosque. Maqrizi mentions at the opening of this section that he is working from a biography of Sultan al-Zahir Baybars.. and presumably that explains the source for his details.

Choosing a location was the first step:

[Sultan al-Zahir Baybars] sent out his commander in chief... and a group of engineers to search for a fitting place where he might put a mosque. They went their way to that end and agreed upon the halting place for the Sultan’s camels. The Sultan replied when he heard this: “By God, I’m not going to build a mosque at the place for camels! I would prefer to place it at the square where I play polo; it’s my place for relaxation.”

The Sultan formulated the idea for building a mosque and then sent out deputies to decide on a location. The Sultan was actively involved enough to find the first choice disagreeable (the stopping place for camels!) and to offer an alternative. We sense the biographer at work behind these details, setting his subject in a good light (sacrificing a polo field!), but a level of involvement and choice on the part of the Sultan remains likely.

Next the Sultan supplied basic structural ideas for the mosque:

He drew in front of him the outline of the mosque, ordered that its entrance be like the entrance to his madrasa, and specified that over its mihrab be a dome on the model of the dome at the tomb of Imam al-Shafi‘a...

We would hardly expect a Mamluk Sultan to busy himself too much with architecture, but he needs no technical knowledge to specify three things: 1) size and layout, 2) style of entrance, and 3) a dome like at the tomb of Imam Shafi'a. The Sultan knew a few standout features from other structures in Cairo and asks for these elements to be incorporated into his mosque. Presumably his engineers would take it from there and then artists and stone workers would work out the details of the design.

Much of the reign of Sultan Al-Zahir Baybars was spent in warfare, but even outside of Cairo he had an eye out for materials that could be used in the prestige construction of his mosque. Having taken Acre from the Franks he razes its citadel.. and in the process he saw some materials that could be useful:

He took for himself all the wood from the citadel along with any panels of marble that were found inside it. He loaded some of the ships found at Yaffa with this material and sent them on to Cairo, ordering that the wood be used to make a maqsura for his mosque... and that the marble panels be used for the mihrab.

The Sultan had nothing to say about the designing of the marble or the wood. Those were details outside his interest. But he recognized valuable materials for his mosque.

In each of these example the picture is of a Sultan actively involved with the construction of his mosque, but at a fair conceptual distance. He has something to say about the placement, design, and materials, but nothing about the real details of the mosque. It happens that this mosque was the first to feature the striped masonry, a style known as ablaq. We can surmise that the Sultan had nothing to say about a detail like that.. an innovation that probably would have stemmed from the actual artists and builders at work on the mosque.