Sultan Kait-Bay's funerary mosque
The tomb mosque of Sultan Kait-Bay is a building in Cairo . The Mamluk Sultan al-Ashraf Kait-Bay had this complex built in Cairo's northern "city of the dead" between 1472 and 1474. Often referred to as a jewel and masterpiece of Mamluk architecture by art historians, the funerary mosque is depicted on the Egyptian £ 1 note.
To the person of the client
Sultan Kait-Bay had been bought by Sultan Barsbay and served as Mamluk under the Sultans Jaqmaq , al-Ashraf Sayf al-Din Inal , Khushqadam and finally Timurbugha , who appointed him commander in chief. He was already of an advanced age when he reluctantly ascended the throne. Kait-Bay's rule was overshadowed by the rebellion of the Dulkadir , vassals of the Mamluks in Lesser Armenia , as well as by the rise of the Ottomans and their increasing intervention in Asia Minor , which caused constant headaches for the Circassian sultans of the Egyptian Burjiyya dynasty . The campaigns against the Ottomans and the Dulkadir burdened the state budget with seven million dinars . In addition to the military threats, economic problems, a devastating plague epidemic and a cattle epidemic, as well as unrest in the army and a rebellion by the Bedouins , Kait-Bay's almost twenty-nine-year reign was only surpassed by that of an-Nasir Muhammad , a golden age for architecture and art. His efforts to improve trade relations with Europe and to stimulate exports led to a revival of many crafts, and his pious foundations promoted the perfection of architecture and especially of decor. Kait-Bay commissioned over 60 construction projects of all kinds in the Mamluk Empire from Cairo via Mecca and Medina to Jerusalem and Damascus , including mosques, houses, wikelas (these are caravanserais ) such as B. those at Bab an-Nasr and fortifications such as the Kait-Bay-Citadel in Alexandria . The buildings from his reign are characterized less by imposing dimensions than by harmony in proportions and elegance.
Function of the building
Although Kait-Bay's mosque is called a madrasa according to the inscription , both the Waqf document and the historian Ibn Iyas describe its purpose as a Friday mosque with an attached Sufi convent - just like most mosques of the late Mamluk period. The staff included five reciteers of the Koran , but there is no indication of legal or religious teaching activities, nor is membership of one of the four madhhabs prescribed for the preacher or imam . In the deed of foundation only one elementary school (Arabic "maktaba") is specified. 40 Sufis and their sheik belonged to the mosque , who gathered every day and prayed for the founder and his descendants. The foundation, however, does not require them to live in the building, as was the case with the early Sufi convents. Ibn Iyas mentions only 30 Sufis and the name of their head, Sheikh Abu Abdallah al-Qalijani al-Maghribi. Surprisingly, the sheikh belonged to the Malikite school of Islamic law . This could be related to the fact that the burial mosque was built in the vicinity of the shrine of the Sufi sheikh Abdallah al-Minufi, who died in 1348 and was a Malikit himself. The foundation rules themselves do not favor any of the four schools of law with regard to rites.
The construction works
The date engraved on the portal of the mosque indicates the year 877 after the Hijra (1472/73 AD), while inscriptions in the prayer ivan and the western ivan indicate the month of Rajab of the same year (December 1472), and the central area with Ramadan is dated, which corresponds to February 1473, whereas the mausoleum until almost two years later, (November 1474) was completed in Rajab 879th The gate to the entire quarter bears the same date. The minbar is dated Rabīʿ al-awwal 878 (August 1473) and thus more than a year older than the opening prayer, which, according to Ibn Iyas, was only celebrated in Rajab 879 - at the same time when Kait-Bay appointed the spiritual staff.
Ibn Iyas dates the start of construction work to Shawwāl 874 (April 1470). Three years of construction is unusually long for the Mamluk period, but this construction project also included a large neighborhood with buildings on either side of the street, most of which have not been preserved. To date only the mosque, a "maq'ad" (a kind of loggia ), another mosque dedicated to the sultan's deceased sons, the remains of a gate, a "sabil" (an animal potion), as well as a hall and a residential building have survived receive. According to the very detailed descriptions of the Waqf deed, the district also included stables, a water wheel and some apartments. The deed of foundation also mentions a neighboring mausoleum of a relative of Kait-Bay.
Construction site and arrangement of components
Evilya Celebi describes the whole area around Kait-Bay's grave complex as a kind of summer health resort with gardens in the shape of a triangle, which took three hours to get around. The facility was originally located in the desert, at the intersection of a north-south trade route from Syria with an east-west route to the Red Sea, and served as a resting place for travelers as well as a trading center.
The mosque and madrasa complex of Sultan Kait-Bay is considered a jewel of Mamluk architecture. In it the various creative arts united to a high point of artistic and architectural creation. It combines moderate dimensions with excellent proportions and exquisite stone carvings. The building contains rooms for students, a qubba (a domed mausoleum) and a sabil (public fountain) for passers-by to refresh themselves, above which there is a kuttab - i.e. an elementary school. This large complex has a madrasa in the main building for the four madhhabs, the four Islamic schools of law, while the minbar and the minaret also identify it as a Friday mosque.
The grave mosque turns towards the viewer coming from the north and blocks the road that turns to the east at this point. From the south, e.g. B. from the citadel, an archway with the sultan's coat of arms in the spandrels leads to Kait-Bay's quarter. Unlike today, the mosque was originally connected to other buildings to the west and south. On the north side there were two residential complexes for the Sufis and their sheik across the street. Next to it were the wells for the ritual ablutions and the latrines. A destroyed, half-buried but impressive residential complex with a three-part large portal further to the north, on the west side of the street, is not mentioned in the deed of foundation.
The location of the mosque suggests that Kait-Bay moved the original road further east. The reason for this could have been his desire to achieve an optimal visual effect by placing the mosque in the middle of the street, as Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri did thirty years later on the opposite side in the north of the city of the dead.
The sabil-maktab (public fountain with elementary school above) occupies the northeast corner, with a double arch on the north and a triple arch on the east. The minaret stands west above the entrance. The mausoleum protrudes into the street at the south-east corner of the mosque, giving it a third facade, increasing its visibility from the north and at the same time allowing more light into the interior through the two superimposed windows on the north side of its overhang. The tomb complex has a very special grace, although the dome and minaret are not directly opposite each other, as is usually the case with the buildings of the city of the dead. Instead, the minaret rises above the northwest corner of the building on the opposite side of the dome that dominates the southeast corner. The two components balance each other out and thus harmonize more with each other instead of competing. This is particularly evident in the front view of the building complex from the north - just as it was presented in countless drawings and photographs from the 19th century. Today, however, this view is largely blocked by buildings.
Architecture
The entrance area
Characteristic of Mamluk architecture is the staircase leading to the main entrance, usually crowned by a three-part arch and flanked by stone benches on the left and right. The finely crafted portal consists of a niche with a three-part cross vault above it, with al-ablaq (dark and light, in this case red and white on the outside and black and white stripes on the inside) masonry and stone muqarnas decorations. The gate leads into a rectangular hall known as a “derka”, in which there is a stone bench adorned with different colored marble. On the left a door opens to the sabil room on the ground floor, above which the open balcony of the kuttab rises. The door on the right opens to the steps that lead to the minaret, the kuttab and the rooms for the Sufis and the students. The derka hall leads to a winding passage with a niche called muzammala with an earthen jug in it and on to the courtyard of the madrasa and the tomb.
The madrasa itself surrounds a small square inner courtyard known as durqa'a, and is spanned by a wooden ceiling with a central lantern. There are two ivans on each side of the courtyard , the larger of which is the qibla-ivan. Four stucco windows inlaid with colored glass crown the qibla wall with the mihrāb . The walls of the inner courtyard were originally covered with marble slabs, but these have been lost over the centuries, while the wooden ceiling is decorated with paintings and gold decorations. A band of inscriptions runs around the upper area of this ivan, in which the title of the sultan and the year of construction of the madrasa (877 H./1472) appear. The wooden minbar is decorated with star-shaped inlays made of ivory and mother-of-pearl. Also in the qibla-iwan there is a chair with inlays, in which the imam sat during Friday prayers.
The four rectangular windows in the lower wall appear like a strip of light, interrupted only by the mihrāb and the narrow walls between the window openings. The mihrāb and the windows are of the same height and are set in a row of five arched niches with ablaq arch bricks. The middle niche contains the shell of the mihrāb, while the others have painted stucco in their lunettes. The upper part of the wall has two pairs of arched windows, separated by the mihrāb round window in the middle, and allowing colored light in through their stucco and glass grilles.
The central room is crowned by a wooden (not original) lantern. In contrast to Kait-Bay's mosque in Qal'at al-Kabsh, the western ivan does not have a raised dikka (gallery) here, but is pierced in the lower area by three larger windows, which are surmounted by a round window between two arched windows. As in the mosque of Sultan al-Ashraf Sayf ad-Din Inal , the western ivan is framed by two side niches. In the neighboring mausoleum, however, the walls are made of paneled polychrome marble, while the stone mihrāb is decorated with ablaq and stone carvings.
The domed mausoleum
To the right of the prayer hall, behind a wooden wall, is the rectangular sultan's tomb with a side length of 9.25 meters, a height of 31 meters and 2 meters thick walls, which bear the enormous weight of the impressive dome structure. The floor, walls and mihrāb of the mausoleum were once covered with splendid marble decorations.
The transition area between the mausoleum and the dome is supported by pendentives with nine rows of simple but finely crafted muqarnas stone carvings and has narrow, three-arched windows with three round windows above each. A narrow drum with 16 windows supports the unadorned dome. In contrast, the dome has two different types of decorations on the outside: On the one hand, a geometric latticework and, on the other, floral arabesques, which entwine harmoniously around the vault of the dome. The decor starts from a central star at the top of the dome and winds from the apex down to the base. The two network patterns contrast with the smooth dome surface, and the complexity of the design combined with the sophistication and elegance of the execution make it one of the most perfect stone carvings of the entire Mamluk period. It is an often cited masterpiece under Cairo's stone-carved domes. In addition, the triangular corner areas on each side offer space for round windows with the name of Sultan Kait-Bay.
The minaret
The minaret is one of the most perfect of the entire Mamluk period, both in terms of its elegant proportions and the quality of the stone carvings. It rises from its square base to a height of 40 meters in a succession of floors octagonal, circular and at the top in the form of a columnar pavilion (gawsaq), each section being separated from the other by a balcony that sits on a muqarnas- Cornice rests. The ring that goes around the neck of the final bulb is also an original detail. In the 19th century, the upper pavilion looked a little different because the space between the eight pillars was partially walled up. These walls, recognizable on a detailed and accurate lithograph by Ludwig Libay from 1857, could have been part of the original design - as is the case, for example, with the minaret added by Kait-Bay to the al-Azhar mosque - but were made by later restorers removed, which also added new, openwork stone balustrades. A band of inscriptions emblazoned on the lowest floor above the arcades represents the first documented use of sura 62 on a minaret. Two further bands adorn the second floor, of which the lower of the two has remained unfinished.
At the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries, a muezzin spent many hours on the minarets, gazing at the panorama of bustling Cairo in the west and the city of the dead in the east and north and meditating. Wherever the shaft of the minaret got enough light from the door and the window openings, this muezzin scratched inscriptions in a beautiful naschī script on the inner walls. He also engraved other inscriptions on the outer walls of the minaret and the base of the dome and signed them several times, adding the title al-mu'adhdhin (= muezzin) and the respective date to his name. His name can be read as Muhammad al-Nasabi or al-Nashani (the position of the dots does not allow a clear reading). The earliest date given by him is H. 885 (1480), the latest H. 911 (1505). Muezzins - at least those who worked in large mosques - were usually recruited and trained from among the members of the Sufi orders affiliated with the respective foundation. So you probably learned the art of calligraphy. The mentioned muezzin was possibly also trained as an inscription sculptor, as the quality of his inscriptions suggests. Many of these graffiti are verses of the Koran, which exhort the believers to reflect on God and to pronounce his name; others are Sufi sayings or epithets, and some deal with death.
Madrasa and mausoleum for the sons of Kait-Bay
Further to the west, the deed of foundation describes another building known today as the “Kulshani Mausoleum”, the madrasa and mausoleum for the deceased sons of Kait Bay. It is also known as the "old Türbe ", which suggests that it existed before the Sultan's mosque. Interestingly, the Waqf certificate also describes this building as a “madrasa that is a Türbe” and thus confirms that the term “madrasa” at that time meant a covered prayer hall rather than a teaching institution.
Trivia
The north elevation of the Kait Bay Tomb Mosque is depicted on the Egyptian 1 pound banknote.
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. 98-101.
- 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. 273-278.
- 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. 240-243.
Web links
Coordinates: 30 ° 2 ′ 38 " N , 31 ° 16 ′ 29.6" E