SULTAN HASAN MOSQUE
Two remarkable mosques on Salah el-Din Square, including the Sultan Hassan Mosque and the El Rafai Mosque.
In Salah el-Din Square, these two mosques face each other and are remarkable for two very different reasons...
Sultan Hassan Mosque. Although Egypt's history does not record the reign of Sultan Hassan, the country's architecture owes him this jewel of Mamluk religious art: the madrasa he had built between 1356 and 1363. The mosque's square courtyard is flanked by four gigantic iwans. In the center is a covered marble fountain. Lamps hanging from the ceiling "descend" from the main iwan, and a platform supported by eight marble pillars rises up. The mausoleum, accessed through a door in the back of the main iwan, contains the bodies of the sultan's two sons.
El Rafai Mosque. Built in 1819 and completed in 1912, this mosque stands on the historic site of the zaouïa of Sheikh el-Refaï, built in 1122. More recent than its neighbor, it is inspired by the latter in its architecture. It is sometimes thought that they are twins, but there are more than five centuries between these mosques! Construction of the El Rafai mosque was somewhat chaotic, interrupted several times and abandoned for a quarter of a century. It houses many royal tombs, including that of Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran. Some of the tombs are adorned with superb stones, including enormous sapphires in the rough. Impressive! Rich "tarkîba" mark their graves under the dome.
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