A slender minaret
Among the city's tallest.
youssef_alam — CC BY 3.0 · Papillus — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Dennis G. Jarvis — CC BY-SA 2.0 · Roland Unger — CC BY-SA 3.0 · Ibrahim El-Mezayen — CC BY-SA 4.0
Alexandria's most famous mosque, on Mosques Square in the Anfoushi district, holding the tomb of the Sufi scholar Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi, who came from Murcia in al-Andalus, settled in Alexandria and died in 1287. A small mosque was built over his tomb in 1307 and rebuilt several times until it took its present form in the 1930s. The present mosque is one of the finest examples of modern Islamic architecture in Egypt: an octagonal white building crowned by four domes and a soaring, slender minaret about seventy-three metres tall, its walls carved with Arabic ornament, and a spacious interior of granite columns, carved wooden ceilings and marble floors. It faces a wide square shared with the mosques of Imam al-Busiri, author of the poem al-Burda, and Sidi Yaqut al-Arshi, and it is thronged on religious occasions and at the mawlid. Entry is free outside prayer times, in modest dress with a head covering for women. It is a few minutes' walk from the Citadel of Qaitbay, so combine them on a walk through historic Anfoushi.
Among the city's tallest.
With al-Busiri's mosque.
A scholar from Murcia.
Mosques Square, Anfoushi, near the Citadel of Qaitbay
A Sufi scholar born in Murcia in al-Andalus in the thirteenth century, who travelled to Alexandria, settled there and became a leading figure of the Shadhili order; he died in 1287.
