The opening of a mosque and the shrine of Muhammad Ali in the castle after their restoration within two months.

The opening of a mosque and the shrine of Muhammad Ali in the castle after their restoration within two months.

The mosque of Muhammad 'Ali Pasha was built between 1828 and 1848. Perched on the summit of the citadel, this Ottoman mosque, the largest to be built in the first half of the 19th c., Is, with its animated silhouette and twin minarets , the most visible mosque in Cairo.
It is built on the site of Mamluk palaces destroyed at the behest of the patron, an act reminiscent of that of Saladin who wiped out all traces of Fatimid power by dismantling their palaces, and it also superseded the adjacent Mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad as the new state mosque. This first independent ruler of Egypt chose to build his state mosque entirely in the architectural style of his former overlords, the Ottomans, unlike the Mamluks who, despite their political submission to the Ottomans, tenaciously stuck to the architectural styles of the two Mamluk dynasties. But then, as an Ottoman governor of Albanian origin, his primary identification was with the Ottomans rather than