The Corona pandemic forced the city of a thousand minarets (Cairo) to close the doors of its mosques, which had been open and populated for hundreds of years.
The Egyptians yearned yearning for the homes of God, watching the moments of return, and insisting themselves by talking about their memories with the famous Cairo mosques with their majestic minarets and their ancient domes witnessing history.
Some Egyptians may not realize that the mosques accompany them wherever they are. All the Egyptian banknotes currently circulating carry on one side a picture of a famous mosque, a historical tradition that started from the year 1913 and continued until today.
Through the various Egyptian currencies, we tour the introductory tour of some of the most famous historical mosques that have been depicted on the Egyptian banknote since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Sultan Qaytbay Mosque
We start our tour from the Sultan Al-Ashraf Qaytbay Mosque in the Mamluk Desert (east of Cairo), as it is the first of the mosques that appeared on the Egyptian paper currencies, and is still a symbol of the Egyptian pound.
The mosque dates back to the reign of Sultan Qaytbay (872-901 AH), the most famous of the Kings of the Circassian Mamluks who cared about Islamic architecture, and is considered one of the most magnificent mosques of that era and one of the evidence of architectural development at the time.
The mosque tops the face of the ten pounds issued on September 2, 1913, in a wonderful classic design that shows the simplicity of the ancient Egyptian lane, in which the beauty of the mosque appears in its minaret, which is considered one of the most beautiful minarets in Cairo with its architecture, decorations and grace, and its dome decorated with plant and engineering motifs made it an architectural masterpiece and one of The most beautiful domes of the Mamluk era.
The mosque appeared again on the hundred-pound banknotes in the forties and fifties during the reign of King Farouk, and since the end of the sixties he moved to the design of the Egyptian pound, and it is still continuing today.
Muhammad Ali Mosque in the castle
On our tour, we move to the Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi Castle in Cairo, where the Muhammad Ali Pasha Mosque, known as the “Al-Marmar Mosque”, is built in the Ottoman style, and it is the second mosque that appeared on the Egyptian paper currencies and the most prevalent among different groups.
The mosque, which began its construction in 1830, is an architectural masterpiece with its walls covered in alabaster (rare alabaster marble), and sweetened from the inside with decorations, colored and gilded inscriptions, and numerous inscriptions on the windowsills of windows and domed corners.
The mosque occupies a privileged location, as it overlooks Cairo from above and can be seen from long distances, and embraces the sky with its graceful beacons, 84 meters high from the level of the courtyard, and between them the large dome with a diameter of 21 meters and a height of 52 meters.
The second edition of the hundred Egyptian pounds issued in 1913 is adorned with a picture of the castle in the center of the Muhammad Ali Mosque, and then appeared on the next version in 1921, which also carried a picture of the minarets of the Mosque of Sultan Al-Muayyad Sheikh above the "Zewaila" gate, so that the general term for designating this category as "a city mother (minaret)".
Then the mosque moved to the face of the five pounds and the background of fifty pounds in the forties and early fifties, before it disappeared for more than two decades to return again in 1977 with a wonderful design occupying the face of the new category at the time (twenty pounds), to continue to this day as a distinctive sign of this cash category.
Sultan Hassan Mosque
And close to the walls of the castle, we find Sultan Hassan Mosque, one of the most important and most wonderful Islamic monuments in Egypt and the world and is known as the "Dora of Islamic Architecture", because of the luxury and grandeur of the building, the majesty of architecture, the accuracy of the industry and the diversity of motifs.
Sultan Al-Nasir Hasan bin Muhammad bin Qalawun began building his huge building, which covers an area of 7906 m 2 in 757 AH, to be a university and a school to teach the four schools of jurisprudence, and he was allocated 20 thousand dirhams per day to spend on it, according to the famous historian al-Maqrizi, and completed its construction in 764 AH.
The mosque, described by historians as "wondrous of the wonders of the world," was distinguished by its delicate decorations of writings and inscriptions, its great dome and its unique marble minbar, its mihrab stained marble stained marble, and its main entrance, which is considered one of the most magnificent and greatest entries in Islamic architecture and the most high.
The mosque appeared for the first time on Egyptian currencies in 1970 on the front of the ten pounds of red and continued until 1979, to return again with a new design on the hundred-pound paper issued in 1994 until now.
Al-Rifai Mosque
A few meters and more than five centuries of time separate the Sultan Hassan Mosque from its neighbor known as the Al-Rifai Mosque, which in turn is one of the most important major mosques in Cairo and the greatest architecture.
The Al-Rifai Mosque was built in the Mamluk style, upon the proposal of Khushiar Hanim, the mother of Khedive Ismail in 1869, but its construction was not completed until 1912.
The mosque bore the name "Al-Rifai", after a Sufi sheikh who was buried in a small corner, in the place of the mosque, and his name was Ali Al-Rifai, known as Abu Shbak.
The mosque, according to specialists, is an open museum that reflects the history of Islamic architecture in Egypt with its architectural and artistic elements and decorations, and its area of interior is 6500 m 2, and it has become a cemetery for the kings and princes of the family of Muhammad Ali.
This mosque is distinguished as the only one whose internal design appeared on the Egyptian currencies in its first appearance in 1978 in the ten-pound category, before the design was changed in 2003 and the image of the mosque appears from the outside and continues until today.
Qani Bay Spears Mosque
A few meters away, we find the Qani Bay Mosque, the spears whose image adorns the largest classes of Egyptian currency, a 200-pound note.
This mosque, which was built in the year 908 AH, is considered one of the most prominent hanging mosques in Egypt. It was built by the Mamluk prince Qani Bay Qara, and its fame is Ramah, and it is one of the emirs of the dominant Mamluk Sultan Qinsu al-Ghouri in the late era of the Circassian Mamluks, and attached to it a path and a book.
The mosque is distinguished by its double-headed minaret and its delicate carved plant decorations in stone on the outside of the dome that protrudes from the facade of the eastern mosque.
Ahmed bin Tulun
The Ahmed Ibn Tulun Mosque, whose construction was completed in 265 AH, is considered the oldest Egyptian mosque in terms of preserving its layout and many of its original architectural details, and it is one of the largest mosques in the Islamic world with an area of about 6.5 acres.
The mosque is considered one of the mosques suspended for its construction on a rocky summit called "Shukr" in Jabal al-Mokattam. The mosque has 21 gates, surrounded by its four walls from the top of 130 stucco nets with geometric and floral patterns.
The mosque is distinguished for its minaret, which has a unique architectural style that resembles the minaret of the Samarra Mosque "Al-Malwiya" in Iraq, and its minbar is one of the most beautiful and oldest of Cairo.
The mosque's first appearance on Egyptian coins was on the five-pound sheet in 1969, and the design showed the famous minaret and a dome in the nave, before the design was later modified in 1981 to continue on the five-pound sheet to this day.
Mosque and university
From Ibn Tulun to Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, the most famous mosque in the Islamic world, and the first mosque built in Cairo after its foundation by Jawhar al-Skali, where construction began in 359 AH and was completed two years later, and it is currently located in the “Darb al-Ahmar” region.
The mosque was named after Al-Azhar after Fatima Al-Zahra, daughter of the Messenger of God, peace and blessings of God be upon him. It is considered a university and a university for more than a thousand years, and it is the second oldest continuously established university monument in the world.
The half-pound (50 piasters) category has been adorned with the image of the Al-Azhar Mosque since 1968, and various designs have continued to this day.