The Art And Architecture of Islamic Cairo

above: Plan of the mosque of al-Aqmar.
Prayer hall
Riwaq Riwaq
Sahn
Riwaq
64 The Art and Architecture of Islamic Cairo
restoration work carried out by the Mamluk
Amir Yalbugha al-Salimi in 1397, because
they resemble domes in the khanqah of
Sultan Faraj ibn Barquq of similar date
(1400–11), and no such domes are known
during the Fatimid period. The structure of
this mosque is closer in spirit to al-Azhar,
with slender antique columns and tie-beams
holding and supporting keel-arches framed
in the Fatimid manner with elegant bands
of Kufic. According to Behrens-Abouseif, the
mosque is built, like that of al-Salih Tala’i,
over a series of shops, the rents of which
supported the upkeep of the mosque. Unlike
the al-Salih Tala’i, the shops of the al-Aqmar
mosque have not yet been excavated. 18
During the first half of the twelfth
century the prestige of the Fatimid regime’s
lineage was greatly strengthened by the
popular devotion paid at the tombs of the
Prophet’s descendants in the Southern
Cemetery. The Prophet’s progeny, through
Fatima and Ali, had a unique status, and
many of these monuments signify something
more than just tombs – they are shrines
(mashhads) endowed with special sanctity
and baraka (blessing). A number of these
mashhads are pre-Fatimid, and some, such as
those of Sayyida Zaynab and Sayyida Nafisa,
have subsequently evolved into the most
sacred mosque complexes in Cairo. Sayyida
Zaynab (d. 680) and Sayyida Nafisa (d. 824)
were descendants of the Prophet through
Fatima and Ali. The former was the daughter of Fatima and Ali, and
the latter the great-granddaughter of Ali’s son, Hasan. She was a close
friend of the legist Imam al-Shafi’i. Both of these saints are revered by
Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in equal measure. Jonathan Bloom suggests
that the funerary cults of saints descended from Ali, like these, might
well have been established by Isma’ili missionaries some time before
the Fatimid conquest. Because of the secret nature of their mission,
the Isma’ilis directed their activites in Egypt not towards the public
domain of the mosque, but in private houses and among the less