The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

above: Stucco in the courtyard of the mosque of al-Azhar.
54 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo
was to remain, either in a structural or decorative capacity, a
distinctive feature of Cairene architecture up until the Ottoman
conquest. The qibla riwaq dome rests on four squinches alternating
with windows made up of stucco grilles. One beautiful window
grille consists of a diagonal trellis with intersecting stellar patterns,
supporting a delicate interlace of quatrefoils, set with the earliest
surviving examples of green and yellow stained glass. Bands of richly
carved Kufic outline the windows and squinches as well as forming a
continuous frieze around the bay and frame the keel-arches. Dense
patterns of arabesque fill the spandrels of the arches, and the interior
of the dome consists of palmettes, stalks, leaves and fruit.
The al-Azhar mosque has often been radically changed since
the tenth century, most noticeably in the eighteenth century by the
amir Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda, a philanthropist and passionate
builder, who raised the floor and extended the prayer hall four bays
beyond the original mihrab. This irregular extension, coupled with
the retention of the original mihrab, destroyed the symmetry and
continuity of space as well as neutralizing the processional aspect of
the central aisle. There are now two mihrabs providing two points of
focus, and the decentralization of space is further aggravated by the
positioning of Katkhuda’s off-centre mihrab. It is, nevertheless, an
impressive hypostyle space with each bay forming a space frame made
up of tie-beams criss-crossing and intersecting at right angles above
the impost blocks of the slender antique Corinthian columns. They
form an open framework of cells appropriate for individual prayer
and informal teaching purposes. Traditionally the teacher would sit
at the foot of the column surrounded by his pupils, and according to
Muqaddasi, in the tenth century there were 120 such groups. 9
Katkhuda’s work can also be seen in the façade of the main
entrance to the mosque, the Bab al-Muzayyinin. Its double
entrance is surmounted by two moulded semi-circular arches with
tympanums decorated with trefoils, carrying a gilded and
enamelled frieze panelled intermittently with cypress trees in the
Ottoman style. As you pass through a corridor you enter the sahn
of the mosque under the gate and minaret of Sultan Qa’it Bay. The
sahn riwaqs, which are mainly a modern reconstruction, consist of
arcades of keel-arches, joined by tie-beams, mounted on antique
marble columns. Above the apex of each arch is a fluted sunburst
medallion encircled with a delicate border of alternating scrolls and
arrow-heads crisply set in a finely inscribed zigzag of chevrons. In
the spandrels of the arches, framed with a band of Kufic, are
recessed keel-arched niches flanked with colonnettes surmounted