Mosque of Ibn Tulun

The Mosque of Ibn Tulun stands in the Sayeda Zeinab district of Cairo, below the Citadel and close to the Gayer-Anderson Museum. It is part of Historic Cairo, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It was built by Ahmad ibn Tulun, the Abbasid governor of Egypt who later ruled the country with near independence, as the congregational mosque of his new capital, al-Qata'i.

Construction ran from about 876 to 879. Ibn Tulun had spent his early years in Samarra in Iraq, and the mosque follows the style of the great mosques there, built in red brick covered with stucco rather than stone. Al-Qata'i was destroyed in 905, but the mosque survived and was restored in 1296 by the Mamluk sultan Lajin, who added the domed ablution fountain in the courtyard and other features.

The mosque covers about 26,000 square metres, which makes it the largest mosque in Cairo by land area. A courtyard about 92 metres square is surrounded by arcades of pointed arches resting on brick piers, with carved stucco bands and a long wooden frieze bearing Quranic text. Outer walls are topped by crenellations shaped like paper cut-outs, and an outer enclosure, the ziyada, wraps around three sides.

The minaret has an outside spiral staircase, unusual in Egypt, and recalls the spiral minaret at Samarra. The present tower is generally dated to the Mamluk restoration. Visitors can climb it for a view over the old city and the Citadel.

The mosque is open to visitors outside prayer times. Shoes are removed, and modest dress is required, with women covering their hair.

An inscription in the mosque gives the completion date as Ramadan 265 AH, which is April or May 879. Ibn Tulun governed Egypt from 868 to 884, and with its outer enclosure the mosque covers about 26,318 square metres. It is the oldest well-preserved mosque in Egypt and the oldest in Cairo to keep most of its original form.

The sabil-kuttab, a public water fountain with a Quran school above, in the south-west corner of the ziyada, is credited either to Lajin or to the later sultan Qaytbay. The Gayer-Anderson Museum, at the south-east corner outside the ziyada, occupies two linked houses of the 16th and 17th centuries and is usually visited on the same trip. Film fans may recognise the arcades from scenes of the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me.