The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

top: Stone minbar in the khanqah of Sultan
Faraj ibn Barquq.
above: Mashrabiyya windows in a house in
al-Mu’izz street.
182 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo
Talih mosque, the Qala’un complex and the Maridani mosque. Here
lattice-work is used to enclose the tomb of Qala’un and screen off
the qibla riwaq and entrance portico to the Maridani and Salih Talih
mosques. In all these examples the woodwork is heavy and cumbersome
compared to the light mashrabiyya work that characterizes the
window lattices of later domestic architecture. Mashrabiyya work
consists of a multiplicity of turned bobbins, usually oval in shape,
connected by short pegs or turned links. The combinations of these
links are countless, forming cross or stellar patterns, often from polygonal
centres. As Lane-Poole observed, ‘The Cairo workmen found an
infinity of changes that could be rung on their simple materials.’ 26
The work could be extremely intricate, with as many as 2,000
bobbins to a square metre, and where it is used on the balustrades of
minbars it is frequently inlaid with ebony and ivory.
Mashrabiyya work is most commonly seen in the windows
of domestic houses projecting like oriels above street level. They
are designed in such a way that the occupants, particularly
women, can experience the free circulation of air while protected
from the glare of the sun, and enjoy in privacy a clear view of the
street or courtyard below. Larger lattices often contained smaller
hinged windows, and frequently the designs of the upper windows
were elaborated with simple forms of representation and inscriptions.
Within the structure of a major pattern a finer image could
be interwoven representing various objects or symbols such as
lamps, ewers, lions or Coptic crosses or simple inscriptions with
words like ‘Allah’ or ‘Allah is my hope’. 27 One of the earliest surviving
examples, dating from the mid-fourteenth century, is in the
Museum of Islamic Art, Cairo. It is made up of squares and beaded
diagonals and shows the silhouette of a minbar and suspended
mosque lamp. It came from the Sultan Hasan mosque but whether
it was designed for that building is uncertain (the mosque was used
for a time as a storage depot for woodwork). 28 The word mashra-
biyya means ‘a place for drinking’ and it originated from the prac-
tice of placing near the window porous earthenware vessels that
cooled water by means of evaporation.
CALLIGRAPHY AND ILLUMINATION
Mamluk art displays a remarkable continuum in which the language
of geometry, calligraphy and arabesque is eloquently spoken by all
the arts. For example, the radiating patterns of Mamluk wood and
metalwork find their place in the Qur’anic art of illumination with