Mosque Tour

So today we had our first Islam Thought and Practice class in which we spent the day visiting mosques in Cairo. Our teacher is Dr. Shahinda, an Islamic architecture professor at American University in Cairo. She is a devout Muslim although she is unveiled (a touchy subject in the Islamic world).

We visited 3 mosques from different time periods. The first was the Tulun mosque in the first picture. It was once the central and royal mosque of Egypt. It was built in the 9th century and is a real masterpiece of architecture.

The second mosque, shown in the 2nd and 3rd picture is from the 13th century and was built by Sultan Hassan and is a massive, massive structure. It is close by the Citadel and was built as an Islamic school as well as a mosque. Obama visited this mosque on his Cairo visit, so a lot of things had been tidied up and the carpet was new.

The third mosque was right across the courtyard from the Hassan mosque. It is a 19th century mosque and was built fully enclosed, Turkish style. There are some interesting tombs in this mosque of Egyptian kings and the shah that was overthrown in the Iranian revolution (he was related to the Egyptian royal family).

One interesting tidbit is that there is a bit of a controversy in this mosque over a set of windows on the north wall (pictured). One idea is that the French, Christian architect built this in as a Christian icon. Another idea is that it is an innocent arrangement of windows. My thoughts are that if a mosque is trying to avoid anything resembling a cross, then how is this not a deliberate act? Either way it is interesting to see and think about.