Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan Cairo Egypt
The Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hasan (Arabic: مسجد ومدرسة السلطان حسن) is a monumental mosque and madrasa located in Salah al-Din Square in the historic district of Cairo, Egypt. It was built between 1356 and 1363 during the Bahri Mamluk period, commissioned by Sultan an-Nasir Hasan. The mosque was considered remarkable for its massive size and innovative architectural components, and is still considered one of the most impressive historic monuments in Cairo today.
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The mosque occupies almost 8000 square meters in a location close to the Citadel of Cairo. It stands on the site of a lavish palace which had previously been built at great cost by Hasan's father, Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, for one of his amirs, Yalbugha al-Yahawi, and which was demolished to make way for the mosque. The construction of monumental buildings on this location was likely meant in part to create a pleasing sight for the Sultan to look down on from his palace in the Citadel.
During the medieval era, an open square, known as Rumayla, lay between the mosque and the Citadel. Today, the square is occupied by a large traffic circle and has been renamed Salah ad-Din Square. The square and the former hippodrome nearby (on the southwestern side of the Citadel) were historically used for military parades, equestrian games, and official ceremonies, thus giving the location added symbolic significance.
The building is about 150 meters long, 68 meters wide, and 36 meters high. Like all mosques, it is oriented towards Mecca, which is to the southeast of Cairo. The building's southwestern and northeastern facades (its longer sides) are marked by vertical rows of eight windows each (spread across four stories inside) which are a unique feature that helps to visually emphasize the structure's height. The top edge of the exterior facades are crowned by a thick cornice of muqarnas (stalactite-like carving) projecting 1.5 meters over the rest of the wall, another unprecedented feature in Mamluk architecture, although it does not extend around the entire building. Likewise, a crest of fleur-de-lis-shaped crenelations also ran along the whole length at the very top edge of the walls, but today it is only preserved around the mausoleum's walls on the southeastern side. The southeastern or Citadel-facing walls of the mosque and mausoleum have windows framed by more elaborate stone decoration in various patterns. The triangular-shaped spaces above the bottom windows here were once filled with geometric ceramic decoration, possibly of Anatolian Turkish inspiration.
Near the bottom of the southwestern wall, below today's street level, is a row of stone corbels projecting from the wall which likely served to support the roof of a covered market along the street on this side.
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