Al-Azhar Mosque
— — a thousand years of teaching, still in session.
Not only on a wall.
“The Fatimid mosque at the centre of Islamic Cairo, founded in 970 and still the principal seat of Sunni learning a thousand years on. Five minarets, six entrances, three madrasas added across the centuries, the white marble of the courtyard worn smooth by feet. Students sit along the riwaq columns the way they have since the tenth century. From the rooftop of a nearby café, the silhouette stands clean against the long afternoon haze that settles over Khan el-Khalili. from the studio
Al-Azhar Mosque, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
Al-Azhar Mosque stands in the heart of Islamic Cairo, just south of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar in the Cairo Governorate of Egypt. The Fatimid general Jawhar al-Siqilli founded it in 970 CE as the congregational mosque of the newly built city of al-Qāhira; it was completed in 972 and is the second-oldest continuously operating university in the world, after the Qarawiyyin in Fez. The surrounding Historic Cairo district was inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1979 for its concentration of medieval Islamic architecture.
The mosque carries the layers of a thousand years of patrons. The original Fatimid plan — an arcaded courtyard with five aisles around a central sahn — survives at the core; the Mamluk sultans Qaytbay and al-Ghuri added two of the five minarets in the late 15th and early 16th centuries; the Ottoman governor Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda added the Bab al-Muzayinin gate and a third minaret in 1753. The white marble of the courtyard, the carved stucco of the mihrab, and the dark cedar of the minbar each belong to a different century.
Al-Azhar remains an active mosque and an active university — al-Azhar al-Sharif — so visiting hours are subject to the five daily prayer times; non-Muslim visitors are generally welcomed outside of prayer and during daylight hours. Modest dress is required; women should bring a head covering and robes are usually offered at the entrance. There is no admission fee. The mosque is a five-minute walk south of the Khan el-Khalili bazaar and a fifteen-minute walk from the Citadel; the closest Cairo Metro station is Ataba on Line 2.