Mosque Amr Ibn AlAsh
The Mosque Amr Ibn AlAsh, was originally built in 641-642 AD. B.C. as the center of Egypt’s newly established capital, Fustat
Mosque Amr Ibn AlAsh original structure was the first mosque ever built in Egypt and all of Africa.
The location for the mosque was the location of the tent of the commander of the Islamic army, General Amr ibn al-As
One corner of the mosque contains the grave of his son, ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Amr ibn al-‘As.
Due to extensive reconstruction over the centuries, nothing remains of the original building,
but the rebuilt mosque is a prominent landmark can be seen in what is today known as Old Cairo
According to tradition, the original location was chosen by a bird
Amr ibn al-As, commissioned by Caliph Umar, was the Arab general who conquered Egypt from the Romans.
In 641, before he and his army attacked their capital Alexandria in the northwestern part of the Nile river delta,
Amr had pitched his tent on the east side of the Nile, in the southern part of the delta
As the story is told, just before Amr set out for battle, a dove laid an egg in his tent
When Amr returned victorious he had to choose a place for a new capital,
because Umar had decreed that it could not be in distant Alexandria.
Thus Amr declared the place of the dove’s egg holy and made it the center of his new city,
Fustat, or Misr al-Fustat, “City of Tents”
Later, the Mosque of Amr was built on the same site
The original layout was a simple rectangle, 29 meters long and 17 meters wide.
It was a low shed with columns made of split palm tree trunks,
stones and clay bricks, covered with a roof of wood and palm leaves. The floor was gravel
In the building the orientation towards Mecca was not indicated by a hollow niche as it would be in all later mosques.
Instead, four columns were used to indicate the direction of Mecca and were placed on the Qibla wall.
It was large enough to provide prayer space for Amr’s army, but had no other decorations and no minarets.
The mosque was completely rebuilt in 673 by the governor Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari,
who added four minarets, one at each corner of the mosque and doubled the area in size.
The addition of these minarets allowed the call to prayer to be heard from every angle and then echoed by the other nearby mosques.
Governor Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan added an extension to the mosque in 698, once again doubling the area of the mosque.
In 827 there was another major extension that ran parallel to the wall of the qibla in the direction that Muslims had to follow during prayer.
Each aisle had an arcade of columns,
with the last column in each row attached to the wall by means of a wooden architrave carved with a frieze.
In the same year, Governor Abd Allah ibn Tahir made more additions to the mosque
The mosque was enlarged to its current size and the southern wall of the modern-day mosque was built.
In the 9th century the mosque was expanded by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun,
who added a new area on the south-west side, increasing the mosque’s dimensions to 120m x 112m.
At one time during the Fatimid era the mosque had five minarets,
one on each corner and one at the entrance, but all five have now disappeared.
The current Minarets were built by Mourad Bey in 1800.
Also, the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir added a silver belt to the prayer niche which was eventually removed by Salah el Din when the mosque was restored in 1179 after the great fire of Fustat in 1169.
In the 14th century, Burhan al-Din Ibrahim al-Mahalli paid the costs of restoring the mosque.
In 1303, the mosque was restored by Amir Salar after an earthquake.
He also added a prayer niche in front of the mosque’s outer wall, which is now gone.
In the 18th century, one of the Egyptian leaders of the Mamluks,
Mourad Bey the mosque and then ordered its rebuilding in 1796,
before the arrival of Napoleon’s French expedition to Egypt.
During Mourad’s reconstruction, the builders reduced the number of rows of columns
from seven to six and changed the orientation of the aisles to make them perpendicular to the qibla wall.
It was probably also at this time that the current surviving minarets were added.
Unfortunately, during the French occupation, much of the wooden interior decoration was taken by the French army to serve as firewood.
The mosque was rebuilt in 1875.
In the 20th century, during the reign of Abbas Helmi II in Egypt, the mosque underwent another restoration.
Parts of the entrance were reconstructed in the 1980s.
The only part of the mosque’s older structure that can still be seen are some of the architraves that can be seen along the southern wall of the mosque. These were probably added during the reconstruction in 827.
