The Saad Zaghloul Mausoleum ( ar, ضريح سَعد زَغلول) was built following the death of Egyptian prime minister

Saad Zaghloul Saad Zaghloul ( ar, سعد زغلول / ; also ''Sa'd Zaghloul Pasha ibn Ibrahim'') (July 1859 – 23 August 1927) was an Egyptian revolutionary and statesman. He was the leader of Egypt's nationalist Wafd Party. He led a civil disobedience ...

, and was completed by architect Mustafa Fahmy in 1936. It is located in

Downtown Cairo Downtown Cairo ( arz, وسط البلد '' "middle of town")'', has been the urban center of Cairo, Egypt, since the late 19th century, when the district was designed and built. History Downtown Cairo was designed by prestigious French archit ...

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

near Zaghloul's old house, which is known as

Beit El-Umma Beit El-Umma or Bayt al-Umma (House of the People) is a historic house museum and Saad Zaghlul biographical museum in Cairo, Egypt. Saad Zaghlul Beit El-Umma, or House of the People, was built at the turn of the century as a residence for the ...

or the "House of the Nation".

Overview

While Zaghloul died in 1927, his

interment Burial, also known as interment or inhumation, is a method of final disposition whereby a dead body is placed into the ground, sometimes with objects. This is usually accomplished by excavating a pit or trench, placing the deceased and objec ...

did not occur until June 1936 due to disagreements over the mausoleum's design. The Egyptian coalition government favored an Arabo-Islamic style, and the construction of a

mosque A mosque (; from ar, مَسْجِد, masjid, ; literally "place of ritual prostration"), also called masjid, is a place of prayer for Muslims. Mosques are usually covered buildings, but can be any place where prayers ( sujud) are performed, ...

was also considered, although this idea was rejected with the rationale that Zaghloul was a national leader rather than a religious figure. Fahmy ultimately constructed a mausoleum that adhered to a neo-Pharaonic motif, a decision that opponents of the project attributed to Makram Ebeid and other

Copts Copts ( cop, ⲛⲓⲣⲉⲙⲛ̀ⲭⲏⲙⲓ ; ar, الْقِبْط ) are a Christian ethnoreligious group indigenous to North Africa who have primarily inhabited the area of modern Egypt and Sudan since antiquity. Most ethnic Copts are C ...

. However, in his academic article, ''The Politics of the Funereal: The Tomb of Saad Zaghloul'', Ralph M. Coury posited that the design was instead finalized by the Department of Works. Budgetary concerns related to the project also plagued the project, with

Mohamed Mahmoud Pasha Mohamed Mahmoud Pasha (1877 – 1941) ( ar, محمد محمود باشا), also knowns as Mohamed Mahmoud Khalil Pasha, was Prime Minister of Egypt twice. Mahmoud was Minister of Finance from 1927 to 1928. He first became Prime Minister fro ...

and his ministry successfully stalled the project during his tenure. Once the

Wafd Party The Wafd Party (; ar, حزب الوفد, ''Ḥizb al-Wafd'') was a nationalist liberal political party in Egypt. It was said to be Egypt's most popular and influential political party for a period from the end of World War I through the 1930s ...

returned to power in 1930, the restrictions on construction were lifted, although the Liberal Constitution Party soon returned back to power later that year. The mausoleum itself was completed by 1931, although Ismail Sidky delayed the transfer of Zaghloul's body for the remainder of his tenure.

Safiya Zaghloul Safiya Zaghloul ( ar, صفية زغلول / ; ; 1878–12 January 1946) was an Egyptian political activist. She was among the early leaders of the Wafd Party. Background Zaghloul was born in 1878. Her father, Mostafa Fahmy Pasha, of Turkish ori ...

, the widow of the Saad, rejected Sidky's suggestion of burying Zaghloul with other notable figures, so Sidsky instead transferred mummies from an Egyptian museum to Zaghloul's mausoleum, where they remained for several years. Upon the Wafd's return to power in 1936, the mummies were removed and replaced with Zaghloul's body. Built partly of

granite Granite () is a coarse-grained (phaneritic) intrusive igneous rock composed mostly of quartz, alkali feldspar, and plagioclase. It forms from magma with a high content of silica and alkali metal oxides that slowly cools and solidifies undergro ...

, the mausoleum's design features an outward-curving

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, around the top edge of a ...

and entrance flanked by two great lotus

pillar A column or pillar in architecture and structural engineering is a structural element that transmits, through compression (physical), compression, the weight of the structure above to other structural elements below. In other words, a column i ...

s with a pylon gate leading to the interior space, which also houses an unmarked

sarcophagus A sarcophagus (plural sarcophagi or sarcophaguses) is a box-like funeral receptacle for a corpse, most commonly carved in stone, and usually displayed above ground, though it may also be buried. The word ''sarcophagus'' comes from the Greek ...

References

{{coord, 30.037583, 31.237894, display=title Mausoleums in Egypt Buildings and structures in Cairo Buildings and structures completed in 1927 20th-century architecture in Egypt

Overview

See also

References