Ten centuries ago, the first brick was laid for one of the oldest mosques in Fatimid Cairo, the largest in area and the most beautiful in design. In the year 989 AD, Al-Aziz Billah Al-Fatimi, the fifth Fatimid caliph, saw that Al-Azhar Al-Sharif Mosque no longer had the capacity to accommodate more worshipers and scholars, so he began to think about Building a new mosque, but the construction process stopped with his death, before it was completed by his son, “Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah”, the sixth Fatimid caliph,
The mosque was inaugurated in 1012 AD, and was named after the ruler, and in 1013 AD, the ruler issued a decision to convert the mosque into a “mosque” in which jurisprudence was taught, to help Al-Azhar Mosque accommodate scholars and worshipers.
Al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah Mosque is the fourth oldest surviving university mosque in Egypt, and the second largest mosque in Cairo after the Ahmed Ibn Tulun Mosque.
The mosque is located at the end of Al-Muizz Li Din Allah Al-Fatimi Street in Al-Jamaliyya neighborhood, next to Bab Al-Futuh. Where the mosque was at the time of its construction outside the walls of Old Cairo, which was built by Jawhar al-Siqilli, then it became within the city limits after Badr al-Jamali (480 AH / 1087 AD) expanded the city and built the current walls.
After five years of restoration, the ancient mosque was reopened to constitute a strong addition to the antiquities of Islamic Egypt in the historic Cairo area, which is distinguished by its important tourism status and role, according to Minister of Tourism and Antiquities Ahmed Essa, during the opening ceremony of the mosque.
The project to restore and revive the mosque was carried out in cooperation with the Ismaili Bohra sect, and under the supervision of the Islamic, Coptic and Jewish projects and antiquities sectors of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and the General Administration of Historic Cairo, at a cost of 850 million pounds.
Cairo is dusting off
Cairo Governor Khaled Abdel-Al confirmed that the mosque restoration project is part of the development that the historic Cairo area is witnessing during the current period, as it witnessed the opening of Al-Hussein Mosque, Al-Ashraf Street and the Al-Bayt path, in addition to the ongoing Fustat development project.
The head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities, Mostafa Waziri, explained that the restoration project began in February 2017, as the work included periodic maintenance to ward off danger and protect the walls of the mosque from the effect of moisture and salts, in addition to ventilation and strengthening of the walls and treatment of some cracks in them.
The project also included the restoration of all the wooden works in the mosque, including the doors, the pulpit, and the decorative wooden ties under the ceilings of the mosque, the restoration of the chandeliers (Najaf) in the qibla iwan, the maintenance and completion of the niches and glass lanterns in the mosque’s iwans, and the addition of new lanterns as lighting units overlooking the courtyard, as well as the careful restoration of the mosque’s niches with the change of curtains. Which covers the openings of the contracts overlooking the courtyard, renewing the internal and external electricity network, and raising the efficiency of the network, and it was also provided with a system of surveillance cameras with maintenance of specialized lighting for the external façade, in addition to maintaining all the floors of the ions and the marble courtyard in the mosque according to the artistic and archaeological principles.
Al-Hakim Mosque, by God’s command, is distinguished by its prominent main entrance on the main facade – the northwest, which is the oldest example of prominent entrances in Egypt, where the Fatimids took its idea from the Mahdia Mosque in Tunisia. Shiism.
As for the layout of the mosque, it is a semi-square area in the middle of which is an open heavenly courtyard surrounded by four canopies, the largest and widest of which is the qibla canopy on the southeastern side, consisting of five galleries. As for the northeastern canopy, it consists of only two porches. Three arcades, each arcade has a group of arches, and its main façade is topped by two minarets.
The mosque continued to be repaired and repaired after parts of it were destroyed by a devastating earthquake in 1302 AD. The soldiers of the French campaign took it as their headquarters in the late eighteenth century, using its two minarets as military observation towers.
The Qibla and Sahn gallery were used by the Committee for the Preservation of Arab Antiquities as the first Islamic museum in Cairo called Dar Al-Athar Al-Arabiya, before the pieces were transferred to the Museum of Islamic Art in Bab Al-Khalq.
It should be noted that the popular leader Omar Makram renovated some parts of the mosque and covered the qiblah with marble, and added a pulpit and a mihrab next to it at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
