Restoration of Ahmad Ibn Tulun Mosque
Date Added
15/06/2022
Content Type
Article
Category
Websites
Link to Content
Subject Area
Mosques
Author
May Shaer
Publisher Name
Aga Khan Award for Architecture
Year of Publication
2010
Description
The Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun is one of the most important architectural monuments of
Cairo and of the Islamic world as a whole. It dates back to the last quarter of the ninth century,
and therefore belongs to the formative period of Islamic architecture. The fabric of the mosque
has survived exceptionally well, especially considering its brick and plaster construction, the
heavy - sometimes insensitive - uses to which it has been put over the centuries, and its
location in a congested part of Cairo.
The forms and carved plaster decorative motifs of the mosque are considered amongst the
finest examples of the emergent ‘classical’ Abbasid tradition of Islamic architecture. The
mosque was built by Ahmad Ibn Tulun, who was a product of the Abbasid court in Samarra,
the royal suburb of Baghdad, and it survives in much better condition than its two prototypes
in Samarra, the Great Mosque and the Abu Dulaf Mosque - the largest mosques constructed in
the history of Islam.
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun is consequently of extreme historical and artistic importance, and
any efforts to preserve it will be followed with considerable interest by anyone involved in the
study of Islamic architecture.
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