Historic Cairo is one of the most important and largest heritage cities in the world, as it is a living city distinguished by the richness of its urban fabric, in addition to the multiplicity of monuments and historical buildings that express the long history of Cairo as a political, cultural, commercial and religious capital, dominant and pioneering in the Middle East and the Mediterranean basin. In recent years, the state is working to develop that area, and among the development areas for the area surrounding the Al-Hakim Mosque on an area of 14 feddans, what is the story of this mosque?
Al-Hakim Mosque, God willing, the mosque is located on Al-Muizz Li Din Allah Street adjacent to Bab Al-Fotouh, and it was ordered by the Caliph Al-Aziz Billah, but the construction work did not end in the days of Al-Aziz, and the construction was completed by his son, Caliph Al-Hakim, in the year 403 AH / 1013 AD, which is a rectangle consisting of a courtyard In the middle, exposed and rectangular, the qibla corridor includes five rows of pointed arches carried on rectangular pillars running parallel to the qibla wall, and this corridor is crossed in the middle by a high corridor extending from the courtyard to the mihrab that ends in front of the mihrab with a dome. Two domes, each on four corner arches, between which there are four arched windows.
As for the neck of the dome, it is decorated with eight vaulted windows, and the square of the dome is decorated with a ribbon of leafy kufic inscriptions, and above the fronts of the courtyard are a row of hierarchical inserted fringes. .
We find among them three prominent entrances in the middle of the northern, southern and western façades, the most important of which is the main entrance in the middle of the western façade because it is the oldest prominent entrance in the Islamic architecture of Egypt, as it consists of two huge towers of polished stones, and in the middle of it is a long corridor surmounted by a semi-cylindrical vault, and leads to the inside of the mosque by way The western portico. The prominent entrance in the northern and southern corners is surrounded by two huge minarets built in AH 393 / AD 1003, as is understood from the inscriptions engraved on each of them, the top of which also has a polygonal dome.
The mosque has witnessed many reforms and additions, perhaps the first of which is what Badr al-Jamali, Minister of Caliph Al-Mustansir, did to renew the northern walls of Cairo in the year 480 AH, and thus the mosque became inside those walls after it outside the city of Cairo, and in the year 702 AH the land of Egypt and Cairo were subjected to an earthquake and the al-Hakim mosque was destroyed, so the Sultan rose Al-Nasir Muhammad al-Amir Rukn al-Din Baybars al-Jashinkir renovated the mosque and made a bookcase in it and dug a cistern in the mosque’s bowl. The mosque was renewed again in the days of Sultan Al-Nasir Hassan, 760 AH.
Tue, Jun. 1, 2021
