Bab Zuwayla, Cairo

Bab Zuwayla is the southern gate of Fatimid Cairo, built in 1091-1092 in Badr al-Jamali's rebuilding of the walls; the city's north-south axis, al-Mu'izz street, ends at it and at Bab al-Futuh. ^{2 1} Its name was carried over from a gate of al-Mansuriyya in Tunisia, named after the African troops. ³

Like Bab al-Futuh it has large semicircular towers, solid masonry to two-thirds of their height; their smooth curved stone fronts are relieved only by arrow slits and a moulding that defines a shallow vertical panel crowned by a pointed arch. ¹ The inner flanks of the towers hold recessed panels with lobed arches in the Moorish style, which Yeomans counts the earliest of the type in Cairo. ¹ Between the towers a semicircular gate carries a gallery, and above it an open semicircular arch forms a thick barrel vault; the gallery is thought to have held musicians accompanying ceremonial processions through the gate. ¹

The inner vestibule was once flanked by two semicircular niches, the eastern one altered by al-Mu'ayyad, and the whole is covered by a shallow dome on pendentives in the Byzantine manner. ¹

The towers carry two of the finest Mamluk minarets in Cairo (1420), serving the adjacent mosque of Sultan al-Mu'ayyad Shaykh. ¹