Cairo’s historic district of Al-Darb al-Ahmar lies amidst the dense urban environment of Africa’s largest city and is a neighborhood rich with medieval Islamic structures, bordered by the Ayyubid wall to the east and the Sal-Al-Adin Citadel to the south. (...)
Cairo’s historic district of Al-Darb al-Ahmar lies amidst the dense urban environment of Africa’s largest city and is a neighborhood rich with medieval Islamic structures, bordered by the Ayyubid wall to the east and the Sal-Al-Adin Citadel to the south. In 1998, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) signed an agreement with the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities to revitalize the district and protect it from insensitive development. World Monuments Fund partnered with the AKTC in this initiative, focusing on two major monuments in Al-Darb al-Ahmar: the Um al-Sultan Shaaban Mosque and the Khayrbek Complex. The courtyard-style Um al-Sultan Shaaban Mosque was constructed in 1369 by Mamluk Sultan Khawand Baraka for his mother; its roof is topped by a small scalloped dome and a minaret, which partially collapsed after an earthquake in 1884. The Khayrbek Complex refers to a clustered group of seven structures from the Mamluk and Ottoman periods: a section of the Ayyubid wall (including a 12th-century tower), the 12th-13th-centuryMamluk mausoleum, the ruins of Alin Aq Palace (inhabited from the 13th to 17th centuries), the Mausoleum of Khayrbek (1502), the Mosque of Khayrbek (1520), the Sabil-Kuttab of Khayrbek (1530), and remnants of the Ibrahim Aga Mustafazan house from the mid-17th century. The 16th-century buildings in this group were commissioned by a Mamluk prince named Khayrbek, who became the first governor of Egypt when the Ottomans conquered the territory in 1517.
