Mosque of al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah, Cairo

The Fatimid caliph al-Aziz began this mosque in 990 and his son al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah completed it between 1003 and 1013, near Bab al-Nasr and Bab al-Futuh. ¹ It first stood outside the city wall; Badr al-Jamali later brought it inside his walls, making it part of the northern fortifications. ¹ Ettinghausen and Grabar suggest it served chiefly as a royal sanctuary and imperial ceremonial mosque set apart from the centres of population. ¹

The mosque combines features of the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, al-Azhar and the mosque of Mahdiya in Tunisia. ¹ It has Ibn Tulun's monumental simplicity and is largely of brick, with pointed arches on rectangular piers, but its proportions are taller. ¹ The prayer hall follows the Tunisian model: a wider, taller central aisle perpendicular to the mihrab, and three domes on the transverse qibla aisle, one over the mihrab and two in the corners; unlike al-Azhar there is no dome at the front of the central aisle on the courtyard side. ¹ The central arch of the qibla arcade is taller than the rest, set in a tall crenellated portal and flanked inside by paired marble columns. ²

The façade is faced with dressed stone, its long sweep recalling Mahdiya, broken at the centre by a projecting cubic portal in the Tunisian manner, with niches holding arabesques like those of the al-Azhar mihrab hood. ² At either end are huge battered salients added by al-Hakim and Badr al-Jamali to strengthen the mosque and fold it into the fortifications; they are not load-bearing but encase the lower shafts of the original minarets, revealed when the rubble between them was removed during restoration. ² The northern shaft is a tapering cylinder on a square block, the southern a taller rectangular shaft with an octagonal second tier; the southern bears a foliated Kufic inscription with al-Hakim's name, and the northern's bands and lozenges resemble those of the minaret of Sfax, according to Behrens-Abouseif. ^{2 3}

The present minaret tops are the work of Baybars al-Jashankir after the earthquake of 1303 (c. 1309-1310), in the "mabkhara" (incense-burner) style named for their perforated stonework: an octagonal shaft on a rectangular base crowned by a ribbed, helmet-shaped dome; the northern one has tall keel-arched niches and three bands of muqarnas. ^{3 4} Hillenbrand suggests that the tiered division of the Egyptian minaret may derive from the Pharos of Alexandria; Yeomans notes that Creswell dismissed this influence. ^{2 3}

The mosque lay abandoned for centuries, its ruins painted by Prosper Marilhat in 1840; in the early 1980s it was substantially rebuilt and now serves as an Isma'ili mosque, a reconstruction Yeomans calls controversial because it obscured much of the original fabric. ⁴ The inner arcade piers resemble Ibn Tulun's, with engaged corner columns, the arches have a slight horseshoe return, and decoration is sparse, mostly bands of Kufic in stucco. ⁴ The most unexpected Fatimid survivals in place are wooden tie-beams carved with bevelled volutes in Samarra style C. ^{4 5}