ARCHiNOS Records Sultan’s Edifice
12 August 2016
The great mediaeval ruler of Egypt, Sultan Qaitbey, created a whole “royal suburb” in the desert cemetery northeast of Cairo when he built his magnificent mosque and tomb, with numerous charities and religious institutions attached, and with lodgings for those who worked in them. It included a huge residential building of a kind once plentiful in Cairo, but now rare. ARCHiNOS has been granted funding for documentation and study of the building from the Barakat Trust, a UK charity that supports study
and research related to the material
and visual cultures of Islamic societies.
Photograph:
Blazon with royal titles of Sultan Qaitbey on the portal of his rab‘a in the cemetery: Abu al-Nasr Qaitbey, Our Mighty Lord, the Sultan, the King, the Noble; May he be victorious
With preparations completed, the field work is now starting. We hope that this is just the beginning of an endeavour that will eventually bring the monument, now much ruined, to its former glory.
