Al-Rifa'i Mosque
— — the room where the last shahs went quiet.
Not only on a wall.
“A mausoleum mosque at the foot of the Cairo Citadel, raised by the mother of Khedive Ismail and finished forty-three years later under King Fuad. The kings of modern Egypt lie inside, along with the last Shah of Iran. The marble work is cool even in August, and the call to prayer from Sultan Hassan across the square answers it nearly note for note. — from the studio
Al-Rifa'i 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.
The mosque stands on Al-Qal'a Square in Cairo, directly opposite the fourteenth-century Mosque-Madrasa of Sultan Hassan. Construction began in 1869 under Khoshyar Hanim, mother of Khedive Ismail, and ran for forty-three years across two long pauses. The original architect, Hussein Pasha Fahmy, was succeeded by the Hungarian architect Max Herz, who completed the building in 1912 under King Fuad I. The plan deliberately echoes the proportions of Sultan Hassan across the square, in a deliberate dialogue between Mamluk-revival and the older Bahri Mamluk masterpiece it faces.
The interior uses nineteen kinds of marble drawn from quarries across the Mediterranean and Egypt, including Carrara, Turkish, and Egyptian alabaster. Columns of polished stone line the prayer hall, and the dado is panelled in inlay that takes the colour up the walls. The mihrab and minbar are carved and inlaid in the Mamluk-revival idiom Max Herz favoured during his years at Egypt's Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe. The marble keeps the room cool even when the square outside is in summer heat.
The mosque is open to non-Muslim visitors for a small ticket, typically paired on the same ticket with Sultan Hassan across the square. Shoes come off at the door, women are given a wrap if needed, and quiet is expected. The royal tombs occupy chambers off the main hall: Khedive Ismail, Sultan Hussein Kamel, King Fuad I, King Farouk, and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, the last Shah of Iran, who was buried here in 1980 after his death in Cairo. Photography inside is usually permitted without flash.