Egypt: A caravan beside the Mosque of Sultan al-Zahir Barquq, Cairo, Pascal Coste, c.1839

The Mosque of Sultan al-Zahir Barquq includes a madrasa or Islamic seminary and a Sufi khanqah within its precincts. It was built between 1384 and 1386 CE. The architect Shihab al Din Ahmad ibn Muhammad al Tuluni, who belonged to a family of court architects and surveyors, was in charge of part of the construction. The name of Jarkas al Khalili, the master of Barquq's horse and the founder of the famous Khan al Khalili, appears in the inauguration inscription on the facade and in the courtyard.

Its founder was Sultan Barquq, who was of Circassian origin, recruited under the Turkish Bahri Mamluks. The Circassians were subjects of the Tatar Golden Horde and were first imported to Egypt as slave troops by Qalawun in the thirteenth century. Barquq was freed in 1363 AD he established his dominance in the Mamluk government in 1382 when he seized power through a series of intrigues and assassinations. Since he also began recruiting Circassian Mamluks from Caucasus, Egyptian history references the following era as the Circassian Mamluk period with Sultan Barquq as its founder.

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.

Copyright:

Supplier: CPA Media Co. Ltd.

Photographer:

Pascal Coste (PD)

Credit:

Pictures From History