The
Mosque of Amr ibn al-As , also called the
Mosque of Amr, was originally built in AD
642-Europe:* August 5—In the Battle of Maserfield, Penda, king of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald, king of Bernicia.* Batbayan succeeds Kubrat as ruler of the Bulgars .-Africa:...
, as the center of the newly-founded
capital of EgyptThe current capital of Egypt is Cairo. Over the course of history, however, Egypt's capital has repeatedly changed.- List of Egyptian capitals :This is a list of Egyptian capitals in a chronological order....
, Fustat. The original structure was the first
mosqueA mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. Muslims often refer to the mosque by its Arabic name, masjid, —...
ever built in
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
, and by extension, the first mosque on the continent of
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
.
The location for the mosque was the site of the tent of the commander of the conquering army, general Amr ibn al-As. One corner of the mosque contains the tomb of his son, Abdullah.
The
Mosque of Amr ibn al-As , also called the
Mosque of Amr, was originally built in AD
642-Europe:* August 5—In the Battle of Maserfield, Penda, king of Mercia defeats and kills Oswald, king of Bernicia.* Batbayan succeeds Kubrat as ruler of the Bulgars .-Africa:...
, as the center of the newly-founded
capital of EgyptThe current capital of Egypt is Cairo. Over the course of history, however, Egypt's capital has repeatedly changed.- List of Egyptian capitals :This is a list of Egyptian capitals in a chronological order....
, Fustat. The original structure was the first
mosqueA mosque is a place of worship for followers of Islam. Muslims often refer to the mosque by its Arabic name, masjid, —...
ever built in
EgyptEgypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Western Asia...
, and by extension, the first mosque on the continent of
AfricaAfrica is the world's second-largest and second most-populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area. With a billion people in 61 territories, it accounts for about 14.8% of the...
.
The location for the mosque was the site of the tent of the commander of the conquering army, general Amr ibn al-As. One corner of the mosque contains the tomb of his son, Abdullah. Due to extensive reconstruction over the centuries, nothing of the original building remains, but the rebuilt Mosque is a prominent landmark, and can be seen in what today is known as "Old
CairoCairo is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab World. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a center of the region's political and cultural life...
". It is an active mosque with a devout congregation, and when prayers are not taking place, it is also open to visitors and tourists.
Location
According to tradition, the original location was chosen by a bird. Amr ibn al-As, by order of Caliph
UmarUmar , also known as Umar the Great or Farooq the Great was the most powerful of the four Rashidun Caliphs and one of the most powerful and influential Muslim rulers. He was a sahabi of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. He succeeded Caliph Abu Bakr as the second Caliph of Rashidun Caliphate on 23...
, was the first Arab conqueror of Egypt. In 641, before he and his army attacked the capital city of Alexandria (at the northwestern part of the
NileThe Nile is a major north-flowing river in Africa, generally regarded as the longest river in the world....
river delta), Amr had set up his tent on the eastern side of the Nile, at the southern part of the delta. As the story is told, shortly before Amr set off to battle, a dove laid an egg in his tent. When Amr returned victorious, he needed to choose a site for a new capital city, since Umar had decreed that it could not be in far-away Alexandria. So Amr declared the site of the dove's egg sacred, and made it the center of his new city, Fustat, or
Misr al-Fustat, "City of the Tents". Later, the Mosque of Amr was built on the same location.
Structure
The original layout was a simple rectangle, 29 meters in length by 17 meters wide. It was a low shed with columns made from split
palm treeArecaceae or Palmae , the palm family, is a family of flowering plants, the only family in the monocot order Arecales...
trunks, stones and mud bricks, covered by a roof of wood and palm leaves. The floor was of gravel. Inside the building the orientation toward Mecca was not noted by a concave niche like it would be in all later mosques. Instead four columns were used to point out the direction of mecca, and were inserted on the qibla wall. It was large enough to provide prayer space for Amr's army, but had no other adornments, and no
minaretMinarets are distinctive architectural features of Islamic mosques. Minarets are generally tall spires with onion-shaped or conical crowns, usually either free standing or taller than any associated support structure.-Functions of minarets:The earliest mosques were built without minarets, the adhan...
s.
It was completely rebuilt in 673 by Mu'awiya, who added four minarets to each of the mosque's corners and doubled its area in size. The addition of these minarets allowed the call to prayer to be heard from every corner, and taken up by other nearby mosques. Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan added an extension to the mosque in 698 and once again doubled the mosque's area. In 711 a concave prayer niche was added to replace the flat one. In 827, it had seven new aisles built, parallel to the wall of the
qiblaQiblah is an Arabic word for the direction that should be faced when a Muslim prays during Salah. Most mosques contain a niche in a wall that indicates the qiblah....
, the direction that Muslims were to face during prayer. Each aisle had an arcade of columns, with the last column in each row attached to the wall by means of a wooden
architraveThe architrave is a moulded or ornamental band framing a rectangular opening. It is the lintel or beam that rests on the capitals of the columns. As such, it is the lowest part of the entablature consisting of architrave, frieze and cornice...
carved with a frieze.
In 827, Abd Allah ibn Tahir made more additions to the mosque. It was enlarged to its present size, and the southern wall of the present day mosque was built.
In the 9th century, the mosque was extended by the
AbbasidThe Abbasid Caliphate was the third of the Islamic Caliphates of the Islamic Empire. It was ruled by the Abbasid dynasty of caliphs, who built their capital in Baghdad after overthrowing the Umayyad caliphs from all but Al Andalus....
Caliph Al Mamoun, who added a new area on the southwest side, increasing the mosque's dimensions to 120m x 112m.
At a point during the Fatamid era, the mosque had five minarets. There were four, with one at each corner, and one at the entrance. However, all five are now gone. The current Minarets were built by Mourad Bey in 1800. Also, the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir added a silver belt to the prayer niche which was eventually removed by
SaladinṢalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a Kurdish Muslim who became the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led Islamic opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
when the mosque was restored after the fire in Fustat
In 1169, the city of Fustat and the mosque were destroyed by a fire that was ordered by Egypt's own vizier
ShawarShawar was a ruler of Egypt, the vizier, from December 1162 until he was assassinated in 1169. He is best known for being part of the three-way power struggle during the Crusades between the Christian King Amalric I of Jerusalem and Shirkuh, a Syrian general and uncle of the man who was to become...
, who had ordered its destruction to prevent the city from being captured by the
CrusadersThe Crusades were a series of religiously-sanctioned military campaigns waged by much of Latin Christian Europe, particularly the Franks of France and the Holy Roman Empire. The specific crusades to restore Christian control of the Holy Land were fought over a period of nearly 200 years, between...
. After the Crusaders were expelled, and the area had been conquered by Nur al-Din's army,
SaladinṢalāḥ ad-Dīn Yūsuf ibn Ayyūb , better known in the Western world as Saladin, was a Kurdish Muslim who became the Sultan of Egypt and Syria. He led Islamic opposition to the Franks and other European Crusaders in the Levant...
took power, and had the mosque rebuilt in 1179. During this time Saladin had a belvedere built below a minaret.
In the 14th, century Burhan al-Din Ibrahim al-Mahalli paid the costs of restoring the mosque. In 1303, Amir Salar restored the mosque after an earthquake. He also added a stucco prayer niche for the outer wall of the mosque, which is now gone.
In the 18th century one of the
MamlukA mamluk was a soldier who converted to Islam and served the Muslim Arab caliphs from the 9th to the 16th centuries. They were of mixed ancestry but mainly Kipchak Turks...
leaders, Mourad Bey, destroyed the mosque because of dilapidation and rebuilt it in 1796, before the arrival of
NapoleonNapoleon Bonaparte later known as Napoleon I, and previously Napoleone di Buonaparte, was a military and political leader of France whose actions shaped European politics in the early 19th century.Born in Corsica and trained as an artillery officer in mainland France, Bonaparte rose to prominence...
's French Expedition to Egypt. Mourad decreased the number of rows of columns from seven to six, and changed the orientation of the aisles to make them perpendicular to the qibla wall. It was also probably at this time that the current remaining minarets were added. In 1875, the mosque was again rebuilt by
Muhammad Ali of EgyptMuhammad Ali Pasha al-Mas'ud ibn Agha , Muhamed Ali Pasha in Albanian or Kavalalı Mehmet Ali Paşa in Turkish, was born 4 March in 1769 in Kavala in the Ottoman territory of Macedonia - died at Alexandria August 2, 1849, was Wāli of Egypt and Sudan, and is regarded as the "founder of modern Egypt"...
. In the 20th century, during the reign of Abbas Helmi II, the mosque underwent another restoration. Parts of the entrance were reconstructed in the 1980s.
The only part of the mosque's older structure which can still be seen are some of the architraves, which can be viewed along the southern wall of the Mosque. These were probably added during reconstruction in 827.
External links
- http://archnet.org/library/sites/one-site.tcl?site_id=2056
- http://www.ask-aladdin.com/amromosque.html
- http://www.islamicarchitecture.org/architecture/amrbinalas.html
- http://archnet.org/library/dictionary/entry.tcl?entry_id=DIA0018&mode=full