Saturday morning at Ibn Tulun Mosque without the tourists was great for me, but not for the ecomony! I decided to start visiting some of the lesser known sites every weekend for a couple of hours before it gets too hot, and alway wanted to come to Ibn Tulun as it features in James Bonds A spy who loved me. We headed down the autostrad dodging normal Cairo traffic towards the citadel area.
The Muhammed Ali mosque - the Citadel, in the distance.
Ibn Tulun is incredibly picturesque in a photographic/architectual way, a really beautiful buidling in Islamic Cairo. Its apparently Cairos oldest, or oldest unchanged Mosque, but as always in these things theres always a bit of mosque-up-man-ship and there are quite a few oldest mosques in Cairo. This one has a good case being from at least 868-884 AD, which even europeans say in an America accent “Gee thats old”.
Street view old Cairo
We found our way there by Ahmed the Driver knowing it was in the shadow of the Citadel and me looking at google earth before setting off - which was good as Ahmed does not know his Sultan Hassan mosque from his Ibn Tulun so we have arguments in the car like an old married couple, We passed some of the other sites i was scouting for later trips - there some really nice builings in this area, and stop first at the recently burnt out police station.
Apparently the mosque was constructed on a small hill called Gebel Yashkur, "The Hill of Thanksgiving."and according to some this is where Noahs Ark ended up after the flood. Well I can tell you now he would have trouble parking an Ark today, it was difficult enough finding a spot for a small 4x4.
The mosque is constructed around a courtyard, with one covered hall on each of the four sides. This set up give plenty of options for tasty “corridor” shots with the mosque laterns heading off into the distance.
It was very all photogenic and cool in both a "cool" and het cool sense! In the centre of the square is the 13th Century Sabil (place where the water is to wash, now empty apart from a few coke bottled and crisp packets).
The little chap at the door asked Ahmed if I would like to go up the minaret. The minaret is famous for having the steps on the outside in a spiral, one of only two in the world and according to the Great Guru wikipedia is from 1296. In 38oC it was quite a climb but worth it for the view of over the mosque and the Cairo negihbourhoods, Ahmed, like many egyptians, is not the fittest and was puffing by the time he got to the top! sure he was not in any fit state to do the call to prayer.
We also looked down into a small mosque or Madrassa from the minaret that looked interesting so we headed there next, and they two little boabs (guards) welcomed us in. It was called the Madrassa Sarghatmish. It was much more like the Syrian mosques with lots of cooling marble and large lamps. The boab took us into one of the little locked rooms off the courtyard which are individual Madrassas (schools).
Certainly one of my favourite trips to do in Cairo.
