The Jami al-Qarafa Mosque or Qarafa Mosque, was the second major mosque built by the

Fatimid dynasty The Fatimid dynasty () was an Isma'ili Shi'a dynasty of Arab descent that ruled an extensive empire, the Fatimid Caliphate, between 909 and 1171 CE. Claiming descent from Fatima and Ali, they also held the Isma'ili imamate, claiming to be the right ...

in their new capital of

Cairo Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...

after their conquest of Egypt in 969. It was located in the

Qarafa The City of the Dead, or Cairo Necropolis, also referred to as the Qarafa ( ar, القرافة, al-Qarafa; locally pronounced as ''al-'arafa''), is a series of vast Islamic-era necropolises and cemeteries in Cairo, Egypt. They extend to the nort ...

, the great necropolis of Cairo and

Fustat Fusṭāṭ ( ar, الفُسطاط ''al-Fusṭāṭ''), also Al-Fusṭāṭ and Fosṭāṭ, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, and the historical centre of modern Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by ...

. The mosque was built in 976 by order of

Al-Sayyida al-Mu'iziyya Al-Sayyida al-Mu'iziyya, mainly known as Durzan, was the main consort of Fatimid Caliphate, Fatimid Caliph Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah, al-Muizz and the mother of the Fatimid imam-caliph Al-Aziz Billah, al-Aziz. She was known as the first patroness of F ...

(also known as Durzan), mother of the Caliph al-'Aziz (r. 975–996), and her daughter Sitt al-Malik. It occupied the site of the older mosque of the Dome (''Masjid al-Qubba''), and apparently was very large. The historian al-Maqrizi says it was one of the most beautiful buildings of its day. A possible layout was described by Jonathan Bloom in his "The Mosque of the Qarafa", although Yūsuf Rāghib pointed out problems with this reconstruction in his "La mosquée d'al-Qarāfa." In Bloom's opinion, the mosque had a central aisle, wider than the others and with a higher roof, that led a dome over the spaces before the

mihrab Mihrab ( ar, محراب, ', pl. ') is a niche in the wall of a mosque that indicates the ''qibla'', the direction of the Kaaba in Mecca towards which Muslims should face when praying. The wall in which a ''mihrab'' appears is thus the "qibla w ...

. This was similar to the mosques of al-Azhar and al-Hākim bi-Amr Allāh. The courtyard provided a place where the elite of Cairo would meet on Friday evenings in summer, and the covered

qibla The qibla ( ar, قِبْلَة, links=no, lit=direction, translit=qiblah) is the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is used by Muslims in various religious contexts, particularly the direction of prayer for the s ...

part of the mosque gave them a meeting place in the cooler weather. State festivals would be held at the mosque in which food was distributed to all classes of people. According to Ibn al-Zayyāt, it was an especially holy mosque, one where people would seek refuge in times of trouble. When a great fire burned down most of al-Fustat in 1168 the mosque was almost completed destroyed, with only its green mihrab being preserved. It was later rebuilt as the Jami' al-Awliyya, but was little used after al-Qarafa became depopulated following a crisis in 1403.

Notes and references

Notes Citations Sources * * * * Mosques in Cairo Fatimid architecture in Cairo Mosques completed in the 970s Former mosques {{Egypt-mosque-stub