Mosque of Sultan Al-Muayyad - Architecture and Appearance - Exterior

Exterior

The Mosque of Sultan al-Mu'ayyad was the last great hypostyle mosque built in Cairo. Originally it had four facades and entrances. Over time, the mosque fell into disrepair, and today only the eastern facade and the prayer hall are original to the mosque. Much of what can be seen today has been restored over the past two hundred years and is not necessarily how the mosque originally looked.

In order to build the mosque, a portion of the Fatimid wall which used to surround Cairo had to be demolished; however, an old section of the wall was recently discovered within the mosque's structure and can be seen today by visitors. Two towers from the original wall were saved from demolition and serve as the base of the mosque's two remaining minarets.

The main portal, or muqarnas is set in a pistaq, or rectangular frame, that rises above the mosque's facade. This was the last grand portal built in the Mamluk period; it is framed with to the mosque is decorated with finely carved marble bands and kufic calligraphic script. The marble was carved in a geometric pattern and decorated by polychromatic stones and colored stucco in high relief. The main door is a masterpiece of bronze work taken from the Mosque-Madrassa of Sultan Hassan, while the dome is a typical example of Mamluk stone masonry with a cylindrical base and carved zig-zag pattern. The original facades were particularly tall for the period, due to the extra height added by the Fatimid towers at the base of the minarets. The facades were decorated with two rows of windows, and shops beneath each wall of the mosque were added in the original plans and remain today. The shops attached to and around the mosque play an important role in the mosque's upkeep, as a percentage of their earnings go toward maintaining the building and its staff.

Originally, the mosque was intended to include a symmetrical pair of domed mausoleums flanking a prayer hall; this ambition was curbed when the dome of the second mausoleum was not completed. On either side of the prayer hall are funerary chambers, housing the Sultan and his son in one and female members of the Sultan's family in the other. The Sultan's chamber has a domed ceiling, as originally planned, while the women's chamber has a plain flat ceiling. This dome is a reduced copy of Faraj's twin domes; because of the large size of the mosque, the dome appears disproportionately small in its setting.

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