The Shâria er-Rahaba and the winding Shâria Kalat el-Kabsh lead to the E. in a few minutes to the picturesque Shâria ez-Ziyadeh (Pl. D, 7), on the S.W. side of the—
*Gâmia Ibn Tulûn (Pl. D, 7), the oldest in Cairo next to the Amru mosque (p. [460]). It stands near the N. border of what was once the Katâi quarter, on the rocky Gebel Yeshkûr (33 ft.). It was erected by Ahmed ibn Tulûn (p. [443]) on Mesopotamian models in 876–9, immediately after the last extension of the Kairwan mosque (p. [374]), and was the largest of that period in all the lands of Islam. The total area of its precincts is 30,720 sq. yds., while the mosque itself, without the courts, forms a huge square of 150 by 132 yds. The external façades, which are almost undecorated, are relieved by pointed windows and niches and with shell-shaped half-domes and are crowned with pinnacles. We first pass through the E. forecourt to the sanctuary.
The chief quadrangle, about 99 yds. square, is enclosed by double arcades on three sides, while the sanctuary has four arcades (originally five, the fifth having collapsed in 1875). The façades of the court are relieved by pointed windows and rosettes in the spandrels above the brick pillars; still higher runs a frieze of rosettes, and the whole is crowned with pinnacles. In the interior the ornamentation framing the arcades and the foliage frieze on the wall-spaces are carved in stucco, exhibiting as yet none of the intricate forms of the Byzantine-Arabian style. The old prayer-recess with its fine Byzantine capitals and fragments of Byzantine glass-mosaics is noteworthy. The dikkeh (p. [448]) also dates from the earliest period. Above the dikkeh are remains of the original timber ceiling.
A prayer-recess in the fourth series of arcades dates from 1094. The pulpit, now bereft of its sumptuous incrustation, the wooden dome in front of the mihrâb, the plaster windows in the mihrâb wall, and also the dome in the court are all additions by the Mameluke sultan Melek el-Mansûr Lagîn (1296–1308).
The peculiar minaret in the great quadrangle, of which the square basement only was originally built of stone, offers a splendid *View of the vast city. We look down the Nile, to the N., to the Delta, and to the W. and S.W. we see the Pyramids.
The small Medreseh Serghatmash (Pl. D, 7) in Shâria el-Khedeiri, on the N. side of Ibn Tulûn’s mosque, built by a mameluke of sultan Hasan in the style of Hasan’s mosque (see below) in 1357, is interesting on account of its original unaltered dome.
We now turn to the E., past the effective marble Sebîl of the Mother of Abbâs I. (1849–54), and through the Shâria es-Salîbeh (Pl. D, 6) and the Shâria Shekhûn (Pl. D, E, 6), to the Place Rumeileh (Pl. E, 6; tramway No. 6, p. [440]), the starting-place of the Mecca caravans.
To the N. of this square, and at the end of the Shâria Mohammed Ali (p. [450]), rise the modern Gâmia Rifaîyeh (Pl. E, 6), of the reign of the khedive Ismaîl (p. [444]), and the famous—
**Gâmia Sultân Hasan (Pl. E, 6), the grandest medreseh in Egypt, erected for the Mameluke Hasan en-Nâsir (1347–61) probably by a Syrian architect. It rises on a shelving rock opposite the Citadel (p. [453]). The cruciform medreseh has been skilfully adapted to the precincts, an irregular pentagon, about 9470 sq. yds. in area.
The chief *Portal, 85 ft. high, whose side-pillars were originally to have borne two minarets, recall the Seljuk buildings of Konia. The façades terminate in a projecting stalactite cornice, crowned with modern pinnacles, and the walls are relieved by blind niches with round-arched windows in pairs. Over the detached mausoleum, which projects from the S.E. façade, rises a dome 181 ft. high, restored in 1616 in the Arabian-Turkish style, but said to have been originally egg-shaped. The minaret of 267 ft., at the S. angle of the medreseh, is the loftiest in Cairo, and after that of the Kutubia at Marakesh the highest in N. Africa.