Mosque of Ibn Tulun, Islamic prayer house in Cairo, Egypt
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun is a 9th-century congregational mosque built around a square courtyard roughly 160 meters per side, enclosed by arcades of pointed arches on brick piers. Its minaret, with an external spiral staircase, stands in the outer enclosure (ziyada). The courtyard holds a domed fountain from the 1296 Mamluk restoration.
Ahmad ibn Tulun, governor of Egypt from 868 to 884, built the mosque as the congregational mosque of his new capital, al-Qata'i, between 876 and 879 (an inscription slab gives Ramadan 265 AH). Al-Qata'i was razed in 905, leaving only the mosque and the adjoining Dar al-Imara. The Mamluk sultan Lajin restored it in 1296 after hiding in its ruined minaret, and in the 19th century it served as a military hospital, salt warehouse and asylum.
The mosque's name honours Ahmad ibn Tulun, the Abbasid governor who founded the Tulunid dynasty. Its pointed arches and carved stucco echo the 9th-century mosques of Samarra, and the spiral minaret follows the model of Samarra's Malwiya. The flat stucco mihrabs added to the prayer hall's piers in different periods show later devotional use.
The mosque sits on the small hill of Gebel Yashkur, so the courtyard is reached by steps; shoes are removed at the entrance. The main gate with Badr al-Jamali's inscription is the usual visitor entrance. The western wall adjoins the Sarghatmish Mosque and the eastern wall the Gayer-Anderson Museum, so both can be combined in one walk.
The minaret's spiral staircase winds on the outside of the tower, a form inspired by the Malwiya minaret of Samarra in Iraq. Mamluk sultan Lajin, who had hidden in the ruined original minaret while a fugitive, renovated it in 1296 after taking the throne.
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