Ahmed Ibn Tulun Mosque
Originator: - Ahmad Ibn Tulun, founder of the Tulunid state in Egypt and the Levant, his origins go back to the Turkish tribe of Taghziz, and his family used to reside in Bukhari. His father “Tulun” was owned by Noah ibn Asad al-Samani, governor of Bukhara and Khurasan. The name Tulun is derived from a Turkish word, meaning full moon. Tulun gave birth to a number of children, including Ahmed, who was called Abu al-Abbas in 220 AH / 835 CE and was born in Baghdad, Iraq, from a slave girl named Qasim, and he grew up different from his peers from the children of the Persian, keen to avoid the atmosphere of absurdity, amusement and evils, and was known for piety, righteousness, strength, strength and strength. The minister, Ubayd Allah bin Yahya bin Khaqan, sent him to Thagher Tarsus, and he spent several years there, during which he took knowledge, hadith and literature from the most senior scholars. The emergence of the star of Ahmad ibn Tulun began when he was twenty years old after the death of his father in 240 AH / 854 CE, when the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil delegated to him what his father had of military actions. After the death of the Caliph Al-Musta'in and the inauguration of Al-Mu'taz, Baekbak the Turk was appointed to Egypt, but because of his desire to stay close to the capital of the caliphate, Ahmed bin Tulun was appointed by him in matters of governance, because of his wisdom and good conduct and his kinship with him, so Ibn Tulun entered Egypt in the year 254 AH / 868 AD. Despite the prominence of the power centers in Egypt, over which the authority to rule was distributed by Ahmad Ibn Tulun with the Caliph, he remained in power by using the policy of giving money to the rulers in Baghdad, and was supported by his allies among the Turkish leaders who dominate the capabilities of the caliphate, such as Baikbak and Jarjuk [Information 7 ]. Ahmed Ibn Tulun began to consolidate the continuation of his rule in Egypt. He got rid of some of his enemies and weakened others. They were headed by Ibn al-Modabar and Shaqir al-Hajib. The political circumstances in Baghdad helped him to reach his goal, where Baikbak was killed in the year 256 AH / 870 CE and was succeeded by Jarjouk, governor of Egypt, who appointed him In turn, Ibn Tulun took power, and when Jarjouk died in the year 259 AH / 873 CE, the successor to the caliph al-Mu'tamid Ibn Tulun ruled Egypt, and in the year 263 AH / 877 CE, al-Mu'tamid imitated him the matter of the Kharajis of Egypt and the command of the Levantine Thaghur, so he became the only master of the Egyptian lands and the supervisor of all its affairs, and he struck the Ahmadi dinar A symbol of this independence, the borders of his state extended from Libya to the borders of the Byzantine state in Asia Minor, and from the Euphrates River to the waterfall of the first Nile. Ibn Tulun was a statesman of the first order with administrative and military competence, so he took care of the affairs of his state and laid the foundations for its transformation into a strong state, and his reforms included all the various affairs of the state, so he built the city of Al-Qata'a, built palaces, hospitals, shelters and water arches, encouraged agriculture, repaired dams, canals and canals, and dug new ones. He protected the peasants from the injustice of tax collectors and reformed the Nilometer in Rawda. Industry also flourished during his reign, and Egypt was famous for its textile industry. He also built his famous mosque, which is still a testament to the prosperity of the era of his builder. His success in managing the country's affairs led to the spread of prosperity, prosperity and justice among the parish. Ahmad ibn Tulun died in the year 270 AH / 884 CE and was succeeded by his son Khmaruyeh, and he was buried in the Tulunids cemetery at al-Qarafa al-Soghra near its gate at the foot of the mountain {1}.
Creation date: - 263 AH / 877 AD - 265 AH / 879 AD
Location: - Ahmed Ibn Tulun Square, Sayeda Zeinab District, Cairo
Construction engineer: -
Historians disagreed about the personality of the mosque’s architect. Some of them believed that he was a Christian named Sa’id bin Katib al-Farghani, and that he was an engineer of a water spring. Ibn Tulun asked to build it. When he completed it, Ibn Tulun called to visit it. Unfortunately for his luck, the site of the building was still damp. The foot of Ibn Tulun’s mare sank with it. Then he thought that he wanted something bad, so he ordered his flogging and imprisonment, and he remained in his prison until Ibn Tulun wanted to build the mosque, so it was estimated for him three hundred pillars that were difficult to manage except through the use of the columns of churches and monasteries that were ruined, so Ibn Tulun refrained from that, and when the Christian in his prison, he wrote to Ibn Tulun that he was building it for him He also liked and chose without columns except the two pillars of the qiblah, so Ibn Tulun took it out and brought him skins for painting. The Christian then photographed the mosque for him and admired it and liked it, and he was released and took off it and set aside a hundred thousand dinars for the building expense and everything he needed after that, so the Christian put his hand in building in a mountain location He is grateful, and when the construction was completed and Ibn Tulun went to visit the mosque, the Christian went up to the lighthouse shouting to Ibn Tulun asking for the prize and safety, fearing that what had happened would happen to him the first time, so Ibn Tulun secured him and rewarded him with ten thousand dinars and took off on him and made him a large sum of money. The other group of historians speculates that the engineer was not a Christian, but an Iraqi, because the mosque designer was influenced by the design of the Samarra Mosque in Iraq, and the columns or marble columns were not used in the construction, but instead the contracts based on brick pillars were used. Some of them suggested that the engineer was Ahmed bin Muhammad al-Hasib, who came from Iraq to build the new Nilometer in Rawda {2}.
History of the mosque: -
When Ahmad Ibn Tulun established his city Al-Qata`i in the year 256 AH / 870 AD so that it would be a city of his own, his followers and his soldiers, after Al-Fustat and Al-Askar narrowed over them, and as a symbol of his independence from the Abbasid state, and as it was customary at that time that the Great Mosque was the center of Islamic capitals, Ibn Tulun was built Its huge mosque with al-Qata’a, and it was mentioned that one of the reasons for building the mosque was the narrowness of the Al-Askar mosque with its worshipers, so the building of the mosque began in 263 AH / 877 CE and the construction was completed in the year 265 AH / 879 CE, and the construction of the mosque was allocated one hundred thousand dinars, but its cost upon completion reached one hundred and twenty thousand dinars was Its source is a treasure that Ibn Tulun found in the mountain, when the mosque’s architecture was completed, the readers and jurists were transferred to it, and the judge prayed in Bakkar bin Qutayba, and al-Rabeeh ibn Sulayman studied in it the hadith: “Whoever builds a mosque for God, even as an inspector of Qatah, God will build for him a house in Paradise.” Great and nourished the poor and the needy. He approached the people by praying in it and required their children to pray the Friday prayer at Fawarat al-Jami ', then after the prayer they would go out to the Majlis al-Rabee' bin Suleiman to write the knowledge and with each one of his papers and several boys, and the mosque was known in the fourth century AH / tenth century AD "Al-Jami Al-Fawqani". In order to distinguish him from the "Al-Saflani Mosque" which is the mosque of Amr Ibn Al-Aas in Al-Fustat, when the plot to kill Sultan Al-Ashraf Khalil Bin Qalawun, which Prince Hussam Al-Din Lajin participated in planning, failed, Lajin escaped and followed and hid in the mosque, and he vowed to God that if he survived this ordeal, he would live The mosque was realized, and he sat on the throne of Egypt, so he made his vows and completed the repair of the mosque in every aspect in the year 696 AH / 1296 CE, and he arranged in it lessons for jurisprudence on the four schools of thought, a lesson in the interpretation of the Holy Qur’an, a lesson in the prophetic hadith, a study in medicine, and he arranged for the mosque preachers, two muezzins and two beds And he decided for them salaries, and worked next to him an office to read Muslim orphans the Holy Qur’an, and since the renewal of those renewals, he became the head of the mosque’s chief judge, and the first of his presidents was Judge Badr al-Din bin Jama'a. In the year 767 AH, Emir Yalbugha Al-Khasaki Al-Omari renewed a lesson in the mosque, in which there were seven teachers for the tap, and he decided for each student jurist forty dirhams per month, and a crop of wheat {3}.
Architectural description of the mosque: -
The mosque is considered one of the hanging mosques, as it ascends to its internal doors in circular steps, and it is one of the largest mosques in Egypt, as its area, with increases, is six and a half acres, and red bricks were used in its construction, and it was erected on Mount Yashkar, so its foundation was in its tribal borders directly on the rock of the mountain. Within its marine borders, its foundations were five meters deep. Its design is based on the example of the mosque mosques, which have a large open courtyard surrounded by arcades with arches. The mosque was built in an almost square shape, whose side length is 162.25 meters x 161.50 meters, from which the mosque is occupied with its walls as a rectangle whose side length is 137.80 meters x 118.10 meters, and in the center of it is an open courtyard approximately square, whose side length is 92.35 meters x 91.80 meters.
Corridors: -
The mosque is surrounded on its tribal, nautical, and western sides, unroofed corridors known as the increases, which are from the mosque, and the walls of these increases are simple, high, with them opened for doors facing the mosque’s doors, and they head from the top of a hollow balcony, and the walls of the mosque were also opened with upper doors and windows, including curves and hidden energies heading from the top Balconies. The mosque has 21 doors, corresponding to the same number in increases, and in some doors there are old wooden crossings with leafy decorations, and the reason for the multiplicity of doors was to facilitate access to the housing and markets that were around the mosque {4}, after crossing the wall of the increase and the doors of the mosque, it reached the iwans with a large courtyard. The eastern iwan represents the qibla iwan and it is the largest and most ornate of the iwans, as it includes five porticos, while the rest of the iwans include two galleries, and it contains the founding plate of the mosque that includes the date of its construction, and in the middle of its eastern wall is the main mihrab, and its structure is tolong, as for the mosaics, the wooden cap and the muqarnas dome Above it is one of the works of Sultan Lajin, whose works are also joined to the wooden pulpit whose fillings were taken from Indian teak and ebony crushed with leafy inscriptions with the utmost precision, and the lajin transferred the old pulpit to the Al-Zahiri Mosque, which has now vanished and left no trace. In addition to the main mihrab in this iwan, there are five other non-hollow stucco niches that emerged after that, two small ones, one to the right of the al-Mudar bench and the other to the left of it, and the al-Mustansiri mihrab located in the middle of the second arcade in the eastern portico on the side of the courtyard, and to the left of the mihrab of Sultan Lajin, and a mihrab that goes back to Maritime Mamluk era to the left of the main mihrab. The corridors are made of brick-built pillars, with pillars and crowns bearing sixty arches, the edges of which are adorned with vegetal stucco ornaments, and open windows decorated with various decorations, and on top of the arches is a decorative frieze of stucco, surmounted by a wooden vase surrounding the halls of the mosque, in which is written in prominent Kufic script, the Al-Baqara and Al-Omran. Choosing pillars instead of pillars was evidence of the designer's good taste, due to their similar length and thickness, which is not the case with the marble sheriffs that usually stole from the dilapidated churches and monasteries. Reinforced cement was used for antique ceilings for the first time in this mosque, and that was by Mahmoud Pasha Ahmed, Director of the Department for Preservation of Arab Antiquities. He built the ceiling with its old divisions of reinforced concrete and then wrapped it with old and new wood identical to the old, and surrounded the four walls of the mosque from the top of one hundred and twenty-nine nets of plaster The drainage in geometric and plant shapes, and the dome in the middle of the courtyard is the third dome built for the mosque, where the first Tulunid dome of the courtyard was burned in 376 AH / 986 AD, and the second one that was established by al-Aziz in God was destroyed and his mother Taghrid was said in the year 385 AH / 995 AD, and it was replaced by the existing dome, which is among the works of Sultan Lajin It was built in the mosque in the year 696 AH / 1296AD, and it is a large dome measuring each of its tribal and nautical sides 12.75 meters, and its eastern and western sides 14.10 meters, and it is carried on four arches whose windows were decorated with Kufic ornaments and writings, and with its neck on the inside was written the verse of ablution, and in the middle of it a fountain, and in its wall a ladder connecting To the surface of its square base. The lighthouse was erected at a distance of 0.40 cm from the western wall of the increase, and it is built of stone with a base of 12.78 meters x 13.65 meters, and it is made up of four layers, the first is square, the second is round, which has a spiral staircase, the third is octagonal, and the fourth is topped with a cap that has the shape of an incense burner. It is the only lighthouse in Egypt that has an external staircase similar to that of the Samarra Mosque. The date of the construction of the lighthouse is a matter of dispute among archaeologists, as some see that the Sultan Lajin renewed it completely in 696 AH / 1296 AD, according to its old example within his work in the mosque, and others see it as Tulunid, except for its summit, which was renewed by Sultan Lajin {5}, and the dome above the mihrab is made of a square base From the outside it contains a group of muqarnas covered with wood to transform the square into an octagonal shape and then to the circle on which the dome rests. This dome is from the works of Sultan Lajin in the mosque {6}. Attached to the mosque is a sabil located on the eastern side of the southern extension, and it has a main façade, which is the western, with a length of 19.80 A meter and divided into two parts, the first includes the entrance door and the second includes the sabil nets, and the rectangular basement room, whose projection is from east to west, is 11.75 meters in length and 5.35 meters in width, and the sabil room is covered by a wooden roof with traces of colorful plant decorations and its corners are four muqarnas, each consisting of seven successive stations {7}, and next to the main mihrab, a door on the southeastern side, from which Ibn Tulun used to exit and enter the emirate house adjacent to the mosque to change his clothes or renew his ablution or to take a rest and then return to the first row without To go beyond the crowds of worshipers, and this house was destroyed with the destruction that befell the city of Al-Qata` after the demise of the Tulunid state, and the house in its place today is one of the works of Sultan Lajin {8}.
Restoration work in the mosque on Egypt History: -
The hand of repair and restoration took place on the mosque on more than one occasion, including during the reign of the Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, who sent down to the mosque eight hundred and fourteen copies. In the middle of the mosque’s courtyard was a marble fountain surmounted by a gilded octagonal dome and carried on marble columns. Time factors. During the succession of Al-Mustansir Billah in the year 470 AH / 1077 CE, the epidemic and drought swept through Egypt, and the walls of the mosque spread and ruined it. Minister Badr al-Din al-Jamali followed him in the year 470 AH / 1077 CE and reformed its pillars and established its construction. In the year 526 AH / 1131 CE, Caliph Al-Hafiz Li Din Allah ordered some repairs to the mosque. During the reign of Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi, the mosque was assigned to a group of Moroccans who colonized it for more than a generation, until Sultan Zahir Baybars assumed the rule of Egypt and took the annexes of the mosque Shona al-Ghalal in 662 AH / 1263 CE. Then the reforms of Sultan Husam al-Din Lajin in the year 696 AH / 1296AD included the construction of the Sabil in the eastern half of the tribal increase, which was later renewed by Sultan Qaytbay, and the construction of the dome today on a fountain in the middle of the courtyard and which has a staircase leading to its back. Work on the wall of its sea base instead of building it Separately, the ribbed upper part of the great minaret above its rotunda, and its construction of the current pulpit, were also restored separately. During the reign of Al-Nasir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun, two cylindrical lighthouses were built in the mosque at the two ends of its eastern wall, which he built with bricks, the first was demolished in the thirteenth century AH, and the second by the eastern marine in 1933 due to a defect. During the reign of al-Zahir Barquq, Haji Ubayd bin Muhammad al-Bazdar in the year 792 AH / 1390 CE established a corridor next to the great minaret, and renewed the ablution next to the old ablution, then Sheikh Sharaf al-Din al-Madani followed him and established a chapel and soil in the year 930 AH / 1534 CE. 1943. In the days of Muhammad Bey Abi al-Dhahab, he established in the mosque a factory for making Sufi sanctuaries. In the year 1263 AH / 1847 CE, Clot Bey transformed the mosque into a shelter for the elderly, and it remained so until the year 1882 when the Arab Antiquities Preservation Committee realized the mosque and directed its attention to it and during the period from 1890 to 1918 removed the new buildings that were inside the iwans, and demolished some of the houses that were blocking the destination The eastern mosque of the mosque, removing dirt and debris, and repairing the dome above the mihrab, the large lighthouse, the eastern sea lighthouse, the pulpit, the stucco windows and part of the ceiling, and preserved the stucco decorations {9} {10}, and during the reign of King Fouad I in 1918 he wanted to re-establish religious rituals in the mosque. It is the Friday obligation and he ordered that its aspects be vacated and its repair completed, so the committee vacated the sea destination and opened its doors, repaired its walls and removed the modernized buildings with tribal increase, evacuated a large part of the eastern and western sides, and the corridors of the western, sea and tribal iwans were paved, and the stucco decorations were repaired in the soles of the arches, and the path in the tribal increase And removed the dirt from the spreads, paved it with it, and the courtyard, and rebuilt the portico overlooking the courtyard from the eastern iwan, and made a concrete roof for all the corridors. Armed with painting the old roof and wrapping it with wood, in which the old parts were inserted, and the Kufic Mizar was reinstalled in it, the cost of these repairs amounted to 40 thousand pounds, and the cost of expropriating the property reached 45 thousand pounds. During the reign of King Farouk the First, many of the stucco windows were repaired, and the mihrab Al-Mustansiri was repaired and the ownership of some of the houses adjacent to the western increase next to the large lighthouse was dispossessed, as well as the rest of the houses that obscure the eastern and tribal sides {11}. As for the last attempts to restore the mosque, it was in 2005 when the Ministry of Culture The Egyptian Ministry of Culture announced that the restoration of its decorations and inaugurated it as one of the 38 mosques that were restored within the historical Cairo project. The Ministry of Culture announced that the restoration of the mosque exceeded its cost of 12 million pounds {12}.
Sources and References: -
1- Hassan Abdel-Wahhab, “The History of the Ancient Mosques,” 1946 edition, Part 1, p. 32:34
2- Suad Maher, “The Mosques of Egypt and Their Righteous Saints, Five Parts, The Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Part 1, p. 142: 145
3- Previous source: - Part 1, p. 147
4- Suad Maher, “The Mosques of Egypt and Their Righteous Saints, Five Parts, The Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs, Part 1, p. 148
5- Previous source: - Part 1, p. 151
6- Amal Muhammad Ali Al-Ataiwi, “The Building and Decorations of the Ahmed Ibn Tulun Mosque in Cairo,” 2000 edition, pp. 40-41
7- Center for Registration of Islamic and Coptic Antiquities, “The Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun”, 2012 edition, 78 pages
8- Amal Muhammad Ali Al-Ataiwi, “The Building and Decorations of the Ahmad Ibn Tulun Mosque, Cairo, Pg. 39:40
9- History of the ancient mosques 1 p. 44:46
10- Suad Maher, Mosques of Egypt, Part 1, p. 146: 148
11- History of the ancient mosques 1 p. 44:46
12- https://web.archive.org/web/20191218004846/https://archive.aawsat.com/details.asp?article=443710&issueno=10565
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