Mosque of Ibn Tulun

Listen first. Outside the walls, Cairo is horns, engines and voices. In here, the noise drops away. Your feet move from street dust onto a wide, open courtyard of pale stone. The light is flat and bright, and it bounces off walls the colour of sand and honey. Around you, rows of arches repeat in every direction, calm and steady. For many visitors, the first surprise is simply the space. It feels less like a building and more like a quiet, walled field.

You are standing in the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. It is one of the oldest mosques in Cairo. It is also the oldest one here that still keeps much of its original form. Its builder was Ahmad ibn Tulun. He came to Egypt in the ninth century as a governor for the Abbasid caliphs, the dynasty that ruled the Islamic world from Baghdad. Over time, he became a nearly independent ruler. This mosque was the heart of the new capital he built.

That capital no longer exists. It was called al-Qata'i, a name usually translated as 'the wards' or 'the quarters'. It held palaces, gardens, barracks and a great square for parades. A later dynasty destroyed most of it. The mosque survived. So the building around you is something like the last piece of a lost city. The streets outside grew up around it over the following centuries.

Now look closely at the walls. They look like stone, but they are mostly red brick covered with a thick layer of plaster, called stucco. This was unusual for Egypt, where builders often worked in stone. Brick and stucco were the common building methods of Iraq. Ibn Tulun had spent time in Samarra, the Abbasid capital north of Baghdad. Many historians see that Iraqi city in the design here, in the materials and in the shapes.

Walk slowly toward the arcades. The arches are pointed, and they rest on thick brick piers instead of slender marble columns. At the corners of each pier, you can see small engaged columns, built into the brick. Around the arches, the stucco carries carved bands of leaves and geometric patterns. Some of this decoration is very old. Some has been restored. In the softer light under the arcades, the carving shows its depth more clearly.

Lift your eyes to the top of the walls. The edge of the roofline is crowned with a row of openwork shapes. Many visitors describe them as looking like little paper figures holding hands. Then look along the inner arcades for a long band of carved wood. It carries verses of the Quran, the holy book of Islam, in an early, angular style of Arabic writing. This frieze runs around a great length of the mosque. It is easy to miss, and it is one of the oldest features in the building.

Now turn toward the minaret, the tower used for the call to prayer. It is unlike almost any other minaret in Cairo. A staircase winds around the outside, so the tower seems to spiral upward. It recalls the famous spiral minaret of Samarra. But here is a surprise. The tower you see today is largely a later rebuilding, from the thirteenth century, made in a style that honours the original.

There is also a story about this shape. Legend has it that Ibn Tulun was sitting with his officials, absent-mindedly twisting a strip of paper around his finger. When someone asked what he was doing, he said he was designing his minaret. It is a charming tale. Historians treat it as folklore, not as record. Still, many guides in Cairo tell it, and it is easy to see why.

Another legend belongs to the ground under your feet. The mosque stands on a low rise once known as Gebel Yashkur. Local tradition says this is where Noah's ark came to rest after the flood. Other traditions connect the hill with Moses. These are beliefs, not proven history. But they show how important this small hill was in the imagination of the city, long before the mosque was built.

In the centre of the courtyard stands a domed structure over a fountain for washing before prayer. It is not from Ibn Tulun's time. It belongs to a major restoration in the late thirteenth century, under the Mamluk sultan Lajin. The Mamluks were a dynasty of soldier-rulers who governed Egypt for centuries. According to the traditional account, Lajin hid inside this mosque, then abandoned and neglected, while he was fleeing for his life. He promised to restore it if he survived. He did survive, became sultan, and kept his word.

That restoration also gave the mosque a fine carved wooden pulpit, called a minbar, from which the Friday sermon is given. Look toward the prayer hall to find it, and look for the niche in the wall that shows the direction of Mecca. That niche is called the mihrab. Over the centuries, other rulers added smaller mihrabs too. So in one hall, you can see work from several different periods standing side by side.

Notice also the space between the inner and outer walls. This is a kind of buffer zone, called a ziyada. It separated the sacred space from the noise and trade of the city. Today it gives the mosque a strange sense of distance from the streets. Many people pass this way without realising that a second wall surrounds the first.

If you have time, step next door. Against the outer wall stand two old houses, joined together and filled with collections by a British officer named Gayer-Anderson, who lived there in the first half of the twentieth century. Today they form a small museum. Film fans may know the setting: part of the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me was shot here. From its roof and windows, you can see the mosque from a different angle.

Before you leave, stand still in the courtyard once more. Feel the sun on the stone, and the shade waiting under the arches. Look at the spiral tower against the sky, and the long rows of arches repeating into the distance. People have prayed here for more than a thousand years. As you walk back out into the noise of Cairo, listen for the moment the quiet ends... and remember how close it was.