Mosques and Stuff

Fun Fact #9

Cairo is nicknamed "the City of a Thousand Minarets". (This is my blog so I can ignore punctuation rules if I want to.) I can't tell you how many minarets there actually are in Cairo, but there are tons. Minarets were originally built as a place from which the call to prayer was made, but that was before loudspeaker systems. 

The Mosque of Muhammad Ali.

Well, for me this week is about school. It's a bit annoying, that whole school thing, but at least some of it is interesting. I'm currently working on three research-based papers, two of which require me to go places that aren't the school library or the internet in order to do research. Those two are good and interesting, the other one sucks. I've been to a few art spaces and spent some time in their libraries and institutional records. And I wandered around Cairo with my Canadian friend and his Egyptian friend, looking for the mosque that we're writing a research paper on. The mosque was assigned to us, but it's small and rundown and very few people have heard of it. So it was a bit of an adventure (like pretty much everything in Cairo). We've also been in the rare books collection at AUC looking up the mosque and its history and old photos and all that. Of course I love smelling and feeling the old books, so I'm a fan of the rare books library.  Though it's more time consuming, researching is also way more interesting when you have to actually go places.

Unfinished details on the portal of Sultan Hassan with a Chinese lotus motif.

The mihrab in Sultan Hassan

I had a field trip to the Mosque and Madrassa of Sultan Hassan today. We had a bit of extra time, so we also went to the Al-Rifa'i Mosque, which is where King Farouk, Ismail Pasha (the grandson of Muhammad Ali), and the Shah of Iran are all buried. Al-Rifa'i is pretty impressive, though it's a neo-Mamluk style mosque built in the late 19th century, so it doesn't really compare to the older mosques I've seen. Sultan Hassan is a Mamluk mosque built in the 14th century. It's quite large and has the tallest minaret in Cairo. It's pretty cool.

Kurdish tourists on the path between the mosques of Sultan Hassan (R) an Al-Rifa'i (L).
I don't know anything about the mosque that's straight ahead.

Muqarnas in Al-Rifa'i

This weekend I'm just doing homework and and trying to have a bit of fun too. I do have to attend a few different artist or art-related talks in the coming weeks, so there will be lots of art. I've been asked to teach the environmental group on campus how to make recycled paper, and of course I'm super pumped about that. I'm also looking forward to the start of Photocairo 5 and starting to wonder about the fate of the 13th International Cairo Biennale, which is theoretically supposed to begin in December. And Marc and Kay arrive in only a week! Parents!

With that, here are some recent photos of Cairo. I only wish I could also convey the smells and the sounds.

Piping hot sweet potatoes

This 17th century mosque is an island in the road. They built the road around the mosque.

The interior of the mosque I'm researching. It's built in a distinctly Ottoman style, so resembles many mosques in Istanbul, but has very few references to Cairene mosque architecture. Note the sinking floor...

The mosque we're researching is a bit rundown...

There's something so perfect about the Pyramids through the smog of modern day Cairo.