Tomb mosque of Sultan Faraj ibn Barqūq
The tomb mosque with the dervish convent of Sultan Faraj in Cairo was built between 1400 and 1411. Its builder was Faraj , who ruled twice as sultan in Egypt (1399 to 1405 and 1405 to 1412). Faraj , the son of Barqūqs , led his army to Syria after the sack of Aleppo by Timur Leng in 1400 , but without being able to save Damascus , which was also plundered and pillaged by Timur's troops. Faraj's rule was suspended for two months in 1405, during which he was replaced by his brother Abd al-Aziz. He returned to the throne but his reign was marked by anarchy in Syria and discontent in Egypt and he was eventually deposed by rebellious emirs supported by the Cairo Abbasid caliph al-Mustain . In the course of an extraordinary initiative, the emirs enthroned the caliph as sultan for a transitional period . Faraj, who tried to avert his deposition, was ultimately murdered.
The building complex is located in the northern necropolis of Cairo and includes a Friday mosque , a Sufi convent, two qubba (domed mausoleums) and two sabil-kuttabs (public fountains with a primary school above).
The construction site
Sultan Faraj granted his father's wish to be buried in the desert and the neighborhood of saints and scholars instead of his tomb complex in the city center. Therefore, he built this burial mosque with a Sufi convent in the northern city of the dead, for which Barqūq had an amount of 80,000 dinars made available for the establishment and equipment of the foundation. In the east of the Fatimid city wall, on an open area in the desert, the Sufi convent could be built without the restrictions in the urban environment. By choosing a former hippodrome as the building site for the complex, Sultan Faraj Ibn Barqūq wanted to connect this area with urban Cairo and turn the wasteland into a residential area. He had the annual procession at the beginning of the pilgrimage diverted to Mecca, so that it now ran over the property of the complex he had built, and in addition to the sabil-kuttabs included in it, where the pilgrims could refresh themselves, he also commissioned the construction of souks , Hostels for travelers, hammams , ovens and bakeries in this square. Faraj died, however, before the project could be completed.
The construction works
Barqūq was buried here in 1399 before the building was erected. An inscription on the dome base in the northern mausoleum states that the Türbe was built by his son Faraj in 803 after the Hijra (1400/01 AD) on the orders of Sultan Barqūq . Another inscription directly below indicates that the building was completed in Jumādā th-thāniya of the year 808 H. (November 1405) by Sultan Abd al-Aziz, a brother of Faraj, who briefly took over the rule that year. On his return to the throne, Faraj completed the building. The southern mausoleum was completed in 813 H. (1410/11). The same date appears on an inscribed stone slab on the facade. An inscription in the north-west portal names Emir Lağin al-Turuntay as the overseer of the construction work. Barqūq had previously chosen Yunus al-Dawadar for this task. So construction began with the northern mausoleum after Barqūq's death, while the prayer hall was likely built at the same time or shortly after. The southern mausoleum bears the youngest date. The rest of the building complex is undated. The entire construction period was eleven years, which is unusually long for the Mamluk period. However, it should not be forgotten that the Sultan was dethroned twice during this troubled time. As mentioned, Faraj wanted to settle Sūqs in this area, but died before he could realize his plans.
Architecture
Although this period of the Egyptian Mamluk Sultanate faced severe economic and political problems, the architecture of this building is one of the most original and outstanding of the entire period. This judgment is shared by the historian Ibn Taghribirdi , who considered the construction plan and craftsmanship to be the second best of its era (khusunat al-'amal wa 'l-imkan) - only surpassed by the Sultan Hasan mosque . Only the relatively long construction period gave rise to criticism. Since the architect had plenty of space, he was able to design a free-standing building that is characterized by symmetry, which is a rare feature in Mamluk floor plans and also offered the possibility of doubling all the main elements - minaret, dome and sabil-maktab. The complex thus contains two identical domes and minarets, which are arranged in such a way that the two minarets can be seen from the west, the twin domes at the corners of the east facade, and a combination of both components when viewed from the north and the south.
The floor plan of the 72 × 73 meter complex is that of a modified arcade mosque, which should remain an exception in the entire Mamluk architecture. The north and south arcades of the inner courtyard, which are slightly lower than those of the prayer hall and the arcade hall opposite, are dominated by the former residential units of the Sufis, which extend over three floors.
The horizontality of the 72 meter long and 17 meter high west facade with the twin minarets facing the city is unique. The four outer walls of the building complex are simply designed. The west or main facade is divided into sections by vertical niches, each of which is crowned by a stalactite hollow. In each niche there are two windows one above the other, the lower one being the larger and framed by the al-ablaq (dark and light, in this case red and white striated) masonry, which is so typical of Mamluk architecture. The minarets also emphasize the main axis of the building together with a small dome over the middle of the east facade, which shows the position of the simple mihrāb on the inner wall from the outside . In addition to the main mihrāb, there are two side mihrābs, which are also very simply designed. Sultan Kait-Bay , who may have been bothered by the rigor of this prayer hall, had an ornate stone minbar added in 1483 (H. 888) and a wooden preacher's podium on the left, which also bears his name.
The round window - the standard structural element of the time, by means of which the viewer from the outside of the facade was shown the position of the mihrāb - is atypically on the opposite west facade.
Deviations and inaccuracies in the architecture
The main mihrāb, together with the arched window above, is not exactly in the center axis of the central nave, but deviates by about 20 cm to the north. The two side mihrābs, together with the arched windows above them, deviate even more clearly from the axis of their respective arcades. The arched windows in the entire qibla wall, i.e. the wall oriented towards Mecca, are not arranged axially according to their naves, but instead follow the arrangement of the recessed panels of the east facade. The two side mihrābs follow the arrangement of the windows, which explains their asymmetrical position. The deviation of the main mihrāb, on the other hand, is apparently more due to a lack of precision craftsmanship than to any structural constraint, which is surprising in a building of this quality. The mihrāb is not the only irregularity, however, as will be seen in the case of the mausoleums.
Minarets
Unlike the minarets of the al-Hakim mosque , which tower over the corner points of the building, or the minarets that originally crowned the portal of the Sultan Hasan mosque, those of the Sultan Faraj complex stand apart from the corners of the building, instead of one each Portal with the associated sabil-maktab can be taken.
The shape of the minarets with their square ground plan on the first floor, which was unusual for the time, and above it a cylindrical second floor without transition, is reminiscent of the northeastern minaret of the almost one hundred years older mosque of an-Nasir Muhammad on the citadel of Cairo. The later minarets of the madrasa of Sultan Barsbay and Emir Qanibay al-Šarkazy follow the same pattern. This shape was possibly also taken up again in the cut-off minaret of the burial mosque Sufi convent of Barsbay further south of the same city of the dead, which also has a first floor with a square floor plan.
The square shaft section of both minarets is pierced on each side by a bay window, which protrudes from a rectangular facade recess and rests on wall caps with muqarnas (stalactite vault) decorations. The second floor is decorated with the same interwoven pattern as the minaret built by Emir Asanbugha in 1370, but in contrast has flat-engraved inscriptions with Quranic verses above. The structure above is modern.
Illustrations and photographs of the minarets from the 19th century show that their bulbs and the stone balustrades of the bay windows have all been replaced in modern times. The latter were made of wood prior to restoration, which may have been the original material or replacements from Ottoman times.
Domed mausoleums
You enter the mausoleums directly from the prayer hall through a grid wall made of geometric half-timbering. Sultan Barqūq and his son - Faraj's brother - Abd al-Aziz are buried in the northern domed mausoleum (qubba). Faraj himself was murdered in Syria, where his body remained. His daughters are buried with their nanny in the southern qubba. The two rooms are not identical. In the south, the women's mausoleum, the space between the two windows in the qibla wall was insufficient for the mihrab, which therefore had to be made narrower than the one in the north mausoleum. The distance between the eastern windows in the northern mausoleum is greater. As with the prayer hall mihrab, the difference in the distance between the windows of the two mausoleums seems to be due to a calculation error by the craftsmen rather than to any structural constraint.
With an inner diameter of 14.3 meters, the two domes above the mausoleums are the largest brick domes of the Mamluk period. Their interior height to the keystone is around 30.4 meters, and they rest over a high transition zone with a corrugated profile that is borrowed from the minaret architecture. Both domes are painted inside in red and black with a pattern of a rosette and ribbons of inscription, imitating marble - a material that would have been both too expensive and too heavy to construct. The pendentifs impress with their nine rows of stone muqarnas decorations, while the outer surface of the domes is decorated with a vertical herringbone pattern that gradually lowers towards the top of the dome. This zigzag pattern first appeared in the mausoleum of Ğamal al-Din Mahmud al-Ustadar (Mahmud al-Kurdi), built in 1395, and was then used several times. The weight of the two domes, which should not be underestimated, is absorbed by a solid masonry transition, which appears easier to the viewer through the ingenious alternation of concave and convex shapes. The two domes here are among the earliest of their kind in this dimension in Cairo and show a peak of Mamluk architecture.
literature
- Ali Ateya: Mamluk Art. The Splendor and Magic of the Sultans. Museum With No Frontiers. Cairo, Al-Dar Al-Masriah Al-Lubnaniah, 2001, ISBN 1-874044-37-6 , pp. 103-106.
- Doris Behrens-Abouseif: Cairo of the Mamluks. A history of the architecture and its culture. Tauris Books, London 2007, ISBN 978-1-84511-549-4 , pp. 231-237.
- Doris Behrens-Abouseif: The Minarets of Cairo. Islamic Architecture from the Arab Conquest to the End of the Ottoman Empire. The American University in Cairo Press 2010, ISBN 978-977-416-426-2 , pp. 206-209.
Web links
- The mosque on archnet.org (Engl.)
Coordinates: 30 ° 2 ′ 57 ″ N , 31 ° 16 ′ 44 ″ E