Egypt: View of the Mosque of Ahmad ibn Tulun, Cairo, Pascal Coste, c.1839

The Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Ţūlūn (Arabic: مسجد أحمد بن طولون‎) is located in Cairo, Egypt. It is arguably the oldest mosque in the city surviving in its original form, and is the largest mosque in Cairo in terms of land area.There is significant controversy over the date of construction of the minaret, which features a helical outer staircase similar to that of the famous minaret in Samarra. Legend has it that ibn Ţūlūn himself was accidentally responsible for the design of the structure: supposedly while sitting with his officials, he absentmindedly wound a piece of parchment around his finger. When someone asked him what he was doing, he responded, embarrassed, that he was designing a minaret.

The mosque was commissioned by Ahmad ibn Ţūlūn, the Abbassid governor of Egypt from 868–884 whose rule was characterized by de facto independence. The historian al-Maqrizi lists the mosque's construction start date as 876 AD, and the mosque's original inscription slab identifies the date of completion as 265 AH, or 879 AD.

Xavier Pascal Coste (26 November 1787, Marseille - 8 February 1879) was a French architect. His father was one of the leading joiners in Marseille. Showing intellectual and artistic promise, Pascal began his studies in the studio of Penchaud, architect of the département and the municipalité. In 1814, he was received into the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. His time in Paris was a pivotal one in his life - there he met the geographer Edme François Jomard, who put him in touch with the viceroy of Egypt, Mehmet Ali, who took Coste on as his architect in 1817.

In 1825 Coste returned to France with an impressive series of drawings of the architecture of Cairo, but he soon went to Egypt once again at Mehmet Ali's request, where Mehmet Ali made him chief engineer for Lower Egypt. Coste remained there for four years, during which time he accumulated many sketches, but he found the Egyptian climate difficult and returned to France in 1829. There he became a professor of architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, thanks to the links he had kept up with Penchaud. He remained in this post until 1861, when he was one of the founder members of the intellectual centre known as the Athénée.

In parallel with these activities he travelled around France and to Germany, Belgium and Tunisia and produced several authoritative works on architecture - his Architecture arabe (1827) earned him a place on the French king's embassy to the Shah of Iran. In Iran Coste and the painter Eugène Flandin were authorised to visit the ruins of Ecbatana, Bishtun, Taq-e Bostan, Sarpol-e Zahab, Pasargadae and Persepolis, where he made many sketches. On his return via Baghdad, he saw the ruins of Seleucia, Ctesiphon and Babylon. He continued via Nineveh, to which the archaeologist Paul Émile Botta was also travelling to begin his excavations.

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Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

Photographer:

Pascal Coste (PD)

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Pictures From History