The historic Al-Zahir Baybars Mosque in the Egyptian capital, Cairo, witnessed on Friday the performance of the first Friday prayers after a closure of 225 years.
Egyptian state television and private channels broadcast Friday prayers at the mosque, which was founded by the Mamluk sultan al-Zahir Baybars al-Bandaqdari between 1266 and 1268 AD.
The Turkish Anadolu Agency quoted Egyptian media that today's Friday prayer is the first prayer held in the mosque after an absence of 225 years in which the rituals were not held, knowing that the mosque was opened last Sunday in the presence of the Sheikh of Al-Azhar, Dr. Ahmed Al-Tayeb and a number of ministers and senior officials in Egypt, as well as attended by Kazakhstan, which co-financed the President of the Senate of Kazakhstan.
The disabling of the mosque began with its use as a military site during the entry of the French campaign into Egypt in 1798, where they erected cannons on top of its walls.
Then the mosque turned into a soap factory during the reign of Governor Muhammad Ali Pasha, who ruled Egypt between 1805 and 1849, and then a bakery was built to prepare bread for the military, and at the end of the nineteenth century the oven was removed and the site was cleaned and used by the English army as a bakery and then an altar. It continued until 1915, according to official information.
Consideration of its restoration began in coordination between the Egyptian state and the Republic of Kazakhstan in 2007, then stopped work in 2011, and returned in 2018, before opening last week.
According to official information, the Al-Zahir Baybars Mosque is the third largest archaeological mosque in Egypt, after the Ahmed Ibn Tulun and Al-Hakim Bi-Amr Allah, with an area of approximately 3 acres, or about 12,<> square meters.
Sultan al-Zahir Baybars, whose name the mosque bears, marks the actual beginning of Mamluk rule in Egypt, which spanned 3 centuries until it ended with the Ottomans' entry into Egypt in 1517.