The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

34 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo
although there are stylistic grounds for questioning this. If Lajin had
rebuilt the whole minaret from scratch, why did he build only the top
shafts in the contemporary Mamluk style and not the infrastructure?
This is inconsistent with the fountain, which is a unified Mamluk
design. Also, as Doris Behrens-Abouseif has pointed out, if this was a
total reconstruction there would have been some commemorative
inscription. 30 The original minaret would have been a free-standing
structure like the Samarran minarets, but here it is connected to the
north-west wall of the mosque by an arched bridge which clumsily
blocks up one of the mosque windows. This was obviously not a part
of the original design. It also destroys the free-standing unity of conception
which the minaret would still retain were it not for the
bridge. In the organization of the masses the first two storeys still owe
something to Samarra, but the corbels, arches, Andalusian horseshoe
windows and octagonal shafts look like piecemeal additions. The
most recent explanation for these irregularities has been offered by
M. Tarek Swelim, who suggests that the rectangular base with its
horseshoe windows was probably built during the Ayyubid period
with the assistance of builders from the Maghrib (western Muslim
world). He argues that the Maghribi community, who settled in the
mosque during the reign of Salah al-Din, may account for the
distinctive blind Andalusian horseshoe windows. Swelim concludes
that the design of the cylindrical shaft was maintained as an acknow
ledgement of the minaret’s original shape and the octagonal shafts
were thirteenth-century additions (but points out that there is no
proof that they were the work of Lajin). 31
Lajin’s fountain replaced an ornamental fountain known
as the fauwara, which was burnt down in 986. Ibn Duqmaq’s
description of it is as follows:
The fauwara was in the middle of the sahn, and
over it was a gilt dome on ten marble columns, and
round it were 16 marble columns with a marble
pavement. And under the dome was a great basin
of marble 4 cubits in diameter with a jet of marble
in the centre ... and on the roof was a sundial. The
roof had a railing around it of teakwood. 32
The fountain we see today is essentially a domed cube with four
pointed arched openings on each side. It is square in plan on the
inside, but the thicker north-east wall, containing a staircase, pushes
the exterior plan nearer to being a rectangle, breaking the symmetry