Al-Rifa'i Mosque

Stand still for a moment in the square below the Citadel. Car horns rise and fall around you. Somewhere, a vendor calls out. Then look up at two enormous stone buildings that face each other across a narrow lane, so close they almost touch. On one side stands the fourteenth-century Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hassan. On the other, the building you came to see: the Al-Rifa'i Mosque. At first glance they look like twins. They are not. Around five centuries separate them.

This is the first surprise most visitors miss. The Al-Rifa'i Mosque looks medieval, but it is a modern building. Work began in 1869 and was only finished in 1912. In those years, cars, telegraphs and electric light were spreading across the world. Cairo was changing fast. Yet the builders chose to look backward, to the age of the Mamluks. The Mamluks were the soldier-sultans who ruled Egypt for more than two centuries and filled this district with domes and minarets.

The mosque began with a woman. Khushyar Hanim was the mother of Khedive Ismail. A khedive was the ruler of Egypt under the Ottoman Empire. Ismail wanted Cairo to look modern and European, with wide boulevards and an opera house. His mother had a different project in mind. She commissioned a grand mosque that would also hold tombs for her family. The building would serve as a royal mausoleum for the dynasty that ruled Egypt.

She chose a site that already held meaning. A small Sufi shrine stood here before. It was linked to the Rifa'i order, a Sufi brotherhood named after Ahmad al-Rifa'i, a medieval mystic from Iraq. Sufism is the mystical tradition within Islam, and its orders gathered around the tombs of holy men. A local saint of the order is still buried inside the mosque. That is why the building carries the Rifa'i name today, and not the name of the woman who paid for it.

The project was not smooth. The first architect was an Egyptian, Husayn Fahmi Pasha. Construction stopped in the 1880s and the site stood unfinished for many years. Egypt was going through political crisis and growing debt in that period. Work only started again in the early 1900s. A Hungarian architect named Max Herz led the second phase. Herz was a leading expert on Cairo's Islamic monuments and worked on preserving them. He completed the building in 1912.

Now look at the outside walls. The stone is pale and smooth, cut with machine-age precision. Compare it with Sultan Hassan across the lane, where the stone is darker and worn by six centuries of dust and sun. Both buildings use tall recessed panels, carved bands of decoration, and heavy wooden doors. The newer mosque copies the old language, but it speaks it more cleanly. That sharpness is your best clue to its true age.

Walk toward the entrance and you pass into a different scale. The interior is very tall and quite dark. Light falls from high windows and lamps hang on long chains. Your eyes need a moment to adjust. Look at the columns and the marble. You will see deep reds, greens and creams set into the walls in careful patterns. The ceilings carry painted and gilded decoration. Then listen. The hall swallows the noise of the square outside, and footsteps sound soft on the carpet.

The building is both a place of prayer and a place of burial. Several members of Egypt's royal family lie here. Khushyar Hanim herself is buried inside, as is her son, Khedive Ismail. Later rulers joined them. Sultan Hussein Kamel and King Fuad the First are buried here. So is King Farouk, the last king of Egypt, who was removed in the revolution of 1952 and died in exile. His remains were brought back to Cairo and later placed in this mosque.

And here is the second surprise. One tomb belongs to a ruler who was not Egyptian at all. The last Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, is buried here. He fled Iran during the revolution of 1979. Egypt's president, Anwar Sadat, gave him refuge. The Shah died in Cairo in 1980 and was laid to rest in this building. There was also a family tie, because his first wife was an Egyptian princess, a sister of King Farouk.

The Rifa'i order itself has a colourful reputation. In older travel accounts, its dervishes were described as men who handled snakes during their rituals. Some writers also mentioned other feats that seemed to defy pain. Treat these stories carefully. Many come from outsiders who loved the exotic. But the connection between the Rifa'i name and snake-handling was widely repeated, and locals sometimes still mention it with a smile.

Step back outside and stand in the lane between the two mosques. This is one of the best places in Cairo to compare two eras side by side. Sultan Hassan was built when Mamluk Cairo was among the great cities of the Islamic world. Al-Rifa'i was built when Egypt's rulers wanted to claim that legacy for themselves. By placing their tombs beside a famous medieval monument, they linked their dynasty to Egypt's long past. Architecture here is also a political statement.

Look up at the minarets and the dome. From the square they rise into the sky above the low rooftops of the old city. Above you, on the hill, the Citadel walls and the pencil-thin minarets of the Muhammad Ali Mosque complete the view. In the late afternoon, the sun warms the stone to a soft honey colour. Pigeons circle the domes. Then the call to prayer begins, and it moves from one minaret to the next across the district.

Before you walk on, turn once more toward the two great facades. One is very old, one is not, and yet they stand together as if they always belonged as a pair. Notice the traffic flowing around them and the people crossing the square without looking up. For Cairo, this is ordinary. As you leave, keep an eye on the skyline. The domes and minarets you see from here were built across many centuries, and each one tells you who wanted to be remembered.