[Bigtitle]Mosque of Al-Hakim[/Bigtitle]

This huge congregational mosque was started by the Fatimid khalif Al-'Aziz and completed by his son al-Hakim, who became one of the most notorious despots ever to rule Egypt. When started, mosque occupied land outside the city walls built by Gawhar Al-Siqilli, but it was subsequently included within the perimeter of the second set of walls built by Badr Al-Gamali. The building followed the precedent of the mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun being constructed on the principle of arcades with piers and pointed arches and with a ziyada, or intermediate space, separating the interior of the mosque from the city around it. The mosque was restored after a great earthquake in AD 1302 by Baybars Al-Gashankir, who added the mabkharas to the original Fatimid minaret shafts. Sultan Hassan also restored the mosque in 1359, after which it fell into disuse and served variously as a prison, stables, fortress, and storehouse. During the last years of the nineteenth century it became home to Musee de l'Art Arabe prior to that institution's relocation to the purpose- built premises that it occupies (as the Islamic Museum) to this day. The Comte did much to reveal the true form of the minarets early in the twentieth century. The mosque remained largely ruined until major reconstruction took place in the 1980s directed by the Bohra Isma'ili sect, which rebuilt all the arcades except for those on the qibla side, covered the sahn in marble, and remodeled the facade. In the course of the reconstruction, the mausoleum of Qurqumas originally situated immediately outside the entrance to the complex, was dismantled and reconstructed in the precincts of the funerary complex of Barsbay in the northern cemetery.