Mosque of Amr ibn al-As

The Amr ibn al-As Mosque (Arabic: , romanized: Masjid Amr ibn al-Āṣ) is a mosque, located in the Fustat neighbourhood of Old Cairo, Egypt. Named in honour of the Arab Muslim commander Amr ibn al-As, the mosque was built in c.642 CE as the centre of the newly founded capital of Egypt, Fustat. The original structure was the first mosque built in Egypt and one of the first in Africa. For 600 years, the mosque was also an important centre of Islamic learning until it was replaced by al-Muizz's Al-Azhar Mosque in Islamic Cairo. Through the twentieth century, it was the fourth largest mosque in the Islamic world. The mosque's location was the site of the former tent of Amr ibn al-As. One corner of the mosque contained a room related in some significant way to his son, Abd Allah ibn Amr ibn al-As. Due to extensive reconstruction over the centuries nothing of the original building remained, but the rebuilt mosque is a prominent landmark and can be seen in what today is known as Old Cairo. It is an active mosque with a devout congregation, and when prayers are not taking place, it is also open to visitors and tourists.

The mosque is named after its founder, Amr ibn al-As, who led the Arab conquest of Egypt. Historical sources record that the mosque was also known in Arabic as al-Jāmi' al-'Atīq (Arabic: , lit.'Old Mosque') and Tāj al-Jawāmi' (Arabic: , lit.'Crown of Mosques').

According to tradition, the original location was chosen by a bird. Amr ibn al-As, by order of Caliph Umar, was the Arab general that conquered Egypt from the Romans. In 641 CE, before he and his army attacked their capital city of Alexandria (at the northwestern part of the Nile Delta), the commander had set up his tent on the eastern side of the Nile, at the southern part of the delta. As the story is told, shortly before he set off to battle, a dove laid an egg in the commander's tent. When he returned victorious, he needed to choose a site for a new capital city, since Umar had decreed that it could not be in far-away Alexandria. Therefore, the commander was inspired to declare the site of the dove's egg as the centre of a new capital city, Fustat, or Misr al-Fustat, "City of the Tents". The commander built a grand mosque at the site of his tent in the encampment.

The complex was completely rebuilt in 673 CE by the governor Maslama ibn Mukhallad al-Ansari, who added four minarets, one at each of the mosque's corners, and doubled its area in size. The addition of these minarets allowed the call to prayer to be heard from every corner, and taken up by other nearby mosques. Governor Abd al-Aziz ibn Marwan added an extension to the mosque in 698 CE and once again doubled the mosque's area. In 711 a concave prayer niche was added to replace the flat one. In 827 CE, it had seven new aisles built, parallel to the wall of the qibla, the direction Muslims face 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 827 CE, governor Abd Allah ibn Tahir made more additions to the mosque. It was enlarged to its present size, and the southern wall of the present day mosque was built. In the 9th century, the mosque was extended by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mamun, who added a new area on the southwest side, increasing the mosque's dimensions to 120 by 112 metres (394 by 367 ft). In 1169, the city of Fustat and the mosque were destroyed by a fire that was ordered by Egypt's own vizier Shawar, who had ordered its destruction to prevent the city from being captured by the Crusaders. After the Crusaders were expelled, and the area had been conquered by Nur al-Din's army, Saladin took power, and had the mosque rebuilt i

Mosque data from Wikidata (CC0). Summary from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA).