A Friday trip to the Mosque

The visitors wanted to see the famous al Azhar Mosque today and so we got Ahmed Da Driver to pick us up after golf lessons and take us into the city. We were dropped off in the area which we at least call "Al Azhar Square", amongst the crowds of a Cairenne Friday. We headed to the mosque there which was really busy, taking shoes off, myself, young J and brother in law Mick entered into the main entrance whilst the girls had to go round the side of the mosque.Inside various groups sat and rested out of the midday heat, whilst others chanted prayers and some walked and crowded around an obviously important area. It was pretty interesting. We came across the girls outside in the side area of the mosque where half of Cairo seemed to be having a Friday picnic (or arguing over who was there first. We soon realised that this was not the famous Al Azhar Mosque but the Al Hussain Mosque, still very interesting and I enjoyed it a lot, but not our intended target. I read in the guide book the mosque is not open to non-muslims - opps! no one seemed to mind anyway. It contains the head of the prophets (PBUH) grandson, who death caused the split between Sunnis and Shias.

Consulting the guide book, whose map turned out to be wrong, we crossed the road to the next Mosque which was Al Azhar. Surprising much less crowds here.

The girls had to don full dress plus head gear to

go in. It was beautifully peaceful inside, lovely architecture and carvings. Following this and dropping the guy who "looked after" our shoes a few Egyptian pounds we called Ahmed and popped to Maadi for a quick coffee and cake. This turned into a quick coffee and cake and shop where Mrs T found and purchased the floor light she had been wanting. I have to admit it is pretty nice, i'll take a photo later. We also went to the little man who owns a small tourist shop in a little offshoot area of road 9. He sells all sorts of carved Egyptomemoribilia if thats a word - I wanted to get some little alabaster candle ""things" for the garden, saw them in aonther shop and they were 35EGP, but friendly little chap had em for 20EGP - told us he had 800 but we only brought 5! Still there are a lot of tealights in those Ikea packs, we could use a few more!

Tonight up to the airport to pick up T who arrives back from Surf n Safari trip to Kenya......

Some images from Al Azhar