The Mosque of al-Hakim

Look at the portal jutting out from the facade: it is one of the oldest monumental entrances in Cairo. The caliph al-Aziz began this mosque in 990, and his son al-Hakim finished it and inaugurated it during Ramadan in 1013.

1A baffling caliph

Al-Hakim came to the throne in 996, aged just eleven, and ruled for a quarter of a century through a stream of startling decrees. The chroniclers say he banned molokhia, the green leaf stew now eaten all over Egypt, along with certain fish and games. He persecuted Christians and Jews and had churches and synagogues destroyed; years later he allowed them to be rebuilt.

One night in February 1021 he rode out on his donkey into the Muqattam hills and never came back. According to the chroniclers, only the animal and his clothes were found. What happened was never explained, and the Druze community, which grew up around his figure, holds that he did not die but went into hiding.

2A thousand years of uses

Around 1010 the minarets were wrapped in large square bastions, and in 1087 the mosque was built into the new city wall. Later it survived an earthquake in 1303, served as a barracks for the French, housed the city's first museum of Islamic art in 1890 and became a school in the 20th century. In 1980 the Bohra community rebuilt it thoroughly, with the white marble you will see if you step into the courtyard.

3What to look for

• The central portal, with blind arches and carved panels.
• The minarets, enclosed in their bastions of 1010.
• The join with the wall, next to Bab al-Futuh.