Wakala and Rab' of Sultan al-Ghuri, Cairo

Al-Ghuri's wakala and rab' (1504-1505) is the best preserved in Cairo, an imposing cubic mass on the narrow Sharia Muhammad Abduh linking al-Azhar with al-Ghuri's madrasa and khanqah. ¹ A wakala is an urban caravanserai for merchants; a rab' is an apartment building. ^{2 3}

A central trilobed portal with a groin-vaulted hood and muqarnas squinches is flanked by rows of shuttered windows, grilles and mashrabiyyas of the rab' above. ¹ It leads to a court ringed by pointed arcades on octagonal ablaq piers, behind which are two storeys: storage on the ground floor and merchants' rooms on the second, with a continuous mashrabiyya balcony above the first floor. ¹ The rab' apartments are triplex, unlike the duplexes of Qaytbay's wakalas, with latrines, water-jug niches and a reception hall below and sleeping rooms and a private roof above. ^{1 3}

Yeomans quotes E. W. Lane's nineteenth-century description: separate lodgings let to families who cannot rent a whole house, each with one or two rooms and usually a kitchen and latrine, reached by a shared entrance and stair; single men were seldom allowed and lodged instead in a wakala. ³ Behrens-Abouseif notes that such apartments usually had no kitchens because fuel was dear, so people relied on take-away food from cook-shops and street vendors, as Lane also observed. ³