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Art. XIII.—The Life and Works of Aḥmad ibn Ṭūlūn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 March 2011
Extract
The Mosque of Ibn ḥūlūn was the third congregational Mosque built in the Muslim capital of Egypt. The first, originally built by 'Amr, the conqueror of the country, in a.h. 21 (a.d. 642), was re-built and extended by many governors in succession, and still remains—a monument of great historical, if of slight artistic interest. The second, known as Gāmi' al 'Askar, or the Camp Mosque, was built in a.h. 169 (a.d. 
), in the military suburb which had grown up since a.h. 133 to the N.E. of the original capital. This Mosque was increased in size in a.h. 211 (a.d. 
) and is heard of as late as a.h. 517 (a.d. 112¾); but all traces of it have been lost for many centuries, nor have any details come down to us with regard to its plan and architecture.
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page 527 note 1 The chief authority upon which I have drawn all through this article is the celebrated book of Al-Maḳrīzy, generally cited as the Khiṭaṭ, written about the year a.d. 1420, and printed at Būlāḳ: in 1853; it is a great storehouse of information on the topography and antiquities of Cairo and Egypt generally. I shall cite it under the name of “Mac.” simply.
page 527 note 2 That is, a mosque in which a sermon is preached on Fridays. Many small mosques had been built, but no one of them has survived.
page 527 note 3 In the Mosque of 'Amr, see Mac. ii. 246–256.
page 527 note 4 For the Camp Mosque, see Mac. ii. 264.
page 528 note 1 'Abd-al-'Azīz ibn Marwān, son of the ruling Caliph. His rule extended from a.h. 65 to a.h. 86.
page 528 note 2 The history of Egypt under the governors, from the time of the Conquest up to the accession of Ahmad ibn Tūlūn, is told in outline by Mac. i. 299–313.
page 528 note 3 As to the giving of Egypt in fief, see especially Mac. i. 313.
page 529 note 1 Sāmarra was at this time the capital of the Caliphs. It lay about three days' journey N. of Baghdād, on the site of a city which Hārūn-ar-Kashīd began to build, but afterwards abandoned. In a.h. 221 (a.d. 835) the Caliph Al-Mu'tasim founded the new city, and is said to have named it Surra man rā'a 
i.e. “He beholds (it) rejoices,” which was contracted by the people into Sāmarra, and other forms. It has been pointed out, however, that a city with a name like this had long existed on the site; Ammian mentioning it in his account of Jovian's retreat, under the name of Castellum Sumere. It would seem, then, that the longer form arose out of a bit of etymological J, mythology. Sāmarra was the seat of the Caliphs for some time after this. Some accounts place the birth of Ahmad there: but the date does not allow of it, Aḥmad having been born in a.h. 220, and the city of Al-Mu'tasim founded the year after. For Sāmarra, see Weil, Geschichte der Chalifen, ii. 302, note: from which most of the information here given is drawn.
page 530 note 1 So in Mac. i. 314. Wüstenfeldt (Statthalter von Ægypten, iii. 9), gives the name as Bargūg. In any case the father-in-law of Aḥmad is not to be confounded with the Māgūr who afterwards appears as Governor of Syria.
page 530 note 2 Early life of Aḥmad, Mac. i. 314.
page 530 note 3 Mac. i. 313.
page 531 note 1 Or at any rate at the beginning of the century, when the splendid map of Napoleon's expedition was made.
page 531 note 2 Ahmad's first years in Egypt, Ibn Shaikh, building and description of Al-Kāta‘i’, Mac. i. 314–316.
page 531 note 3 The Māristān, Mac. ii. 405.
page 531 note 4 The Aqueduct, Mac. ii. 451.
page 532 note 1 The existence of this aqueduct is known to but few persons, and I am not aware that any one has identified it as that of Ibn Tūilūn. It seems to me, however, that there can be hardly any doubt about the matter. The identification depends chiefly on topographical considerations, which involve more discussion than we can here afford space for; and which I hope to develope in another paper. Meanwhile, the details of the construction, given in the text, entirely support the identification.
page 532 note 2 Had he been a Byzantine, he would no doubt have been spoken of as a Rūmy, as in the case of the architects of the three great surviving gates of Cairo, for which see Mac. i. 380, 1.
page 532 note 3 The legend of the treasure, Mac. ii. 267.
page 533 note 1 The collection and expedition of the tribute was usually in the hands of a separate and independent officer appointed from Baghdād. It was in a. h, 259 that Aḥmad at last got rid of Ibn Mudabbir, the collector of the tribute, between whom and himself there had been a continual struggle since the latter's arrival in Egypt. See Mac. i. 314 and 319.
page 533 note 2 Ibn Bugha's expedition, and the fort on Rōda, Mac. i. 319; ii. 178–180. No traces of the fortress now remain.
page 533 note 3 The Mosque, Mac. ii. 269–269.
page 534 note 1 For the Hill of Yaehkur, see Mac. i. 125.
page 534 note 2 This plan reproduces (with modifications in the legend) one drawn by M. Herz, Architect of the Wakfs Administration. As to the orientation, it is to be remarked that I have throughout called the Kibla side South, according to Al-Makrīzy's invariable habit, and marked the sides accordingly, though the custom of the present day would rather call it East. As a matter of fact, in the present case, S. is nearer the truth than E. Taking its bearing as accurately as was possible with a pocket compass, I found the axis of the Mihrab to read 148 degrees. Allowing 4½ degrees for W. declination, we get 143½ degrees S. of S.E. The reading for the Mosque of 'Amr was 135 degrees, or exactly S.E.: and, with some allowance for declination, 4½ degrees E. of S.E. This difference of 13 degrees is confirmed by Al-Makrizy (H. 256) in his chapter on the different Kiblas, or directions to Mekka, in use in Egypt. These, he says, are four in number, the first being that of the Companions of the Prophet, in the Mosque of 'Amr, and others. The second is that of Ibn Tūlūn, which points much further to the S. When 'Izz-ad-din 'Abd-al-'Azīz was Ḳāḍy, [he does not give the date], an assembly was held in the Mosque of Ibn Tūlfūn, and was attended by all the most learned astronomers, who came to the conclusion, and put it on record, that the Mihrab pointed 14 degrees South of the true direction of Mekka. Ibn Tūlūn's Kibla is therefore an isolated instance, and officially condemned as incorrect. The third Kibla in Egypt is that of Al-Azhar, and those like it. which are, says our author, scientifically determined and absolutely correct. The whole subject would be well worth looking into more exactly. See Mac. ii. 256–264.
page 534 note 3 The front row of these five has unluckily disappeared. See below.
page 535 note 1 The street which runs outside the W. Ziāda bears to this day the name of Shāri' az-Ziāda, or Ziāda Street Till within the last four or five years it had a fine show of the picturesque “ mashrabiya ” windows, and was one of the most frequently reproduced specimens of Cairene street architecture. It is given opposite p. 76 of Mr. Lane Poole's “Art of the Saracens in Egypt:” and again as a frontispiece to a book written the other day, by an American citizen, in a lighthearted vein of supreme inaccuracy, Mr. Jeremiah Lynch's “Egyptian Sketches.” The latticed windows have now (1891) nearly entirely disappeared.
page 535 note 2 Mac. ii. 269.
page 535 note 3 Or, perhaps more probably, of the dynasty of Ibn Tūlūn. The Arabic 
is equally translateable by either.
page 536 note 1 Thére is nothing in the text to show whether this means a plan or elevation, or a view in perspective. The general opinion seems to be that regular architectural plans were not used by the Arab architects.
page 536 note 2 Ibn 'Abd aẓ-Ẓāhir (died a.h. 692 =A D. 1292); apud Mac. ii. 268.
page 537 note 1 Died a.h. 454 = a.d. 1062.
page 537 note 2 In Al-Makrīzy's account (ii. 406 sqq.) of the Māristān of Kalawun (a.h. 683 =a.d. 128⅘), we find a good illustration of the whole subject of the employment of forced labour and stolen materials in building a Mosque. On the completion of this great building, which comprised an elaborate hospital, a religious college, and a great domed chamber which was to receive the tomb of the founder,—“a party among the religious made scruples about the holding of public prayer in the college and the domed chamber, and disapproved of the Māristān on account of the excessive labour extorted from the people in building it.” It seems that 'Alam-ad-dln ash-Shugā'y, who was entrusted with the management of the building, had expelled without notice the women who were in the palace which was transformed into the hospital. Besides this, he had collected all the artisans of Cairo, and forced them to work at the building. He used himself to stand on the scaffolding and overlook the work personally, while mamluks stationed by his orders in the street forced every passer-by, of whatever rank or position, to carry a stone for the building, so that no one would come that way if he could avoid it. He had also taken from the citadel of the island of Koda (built by Salih Nigm-ad-din in a.h. 638, a.d. 1240) all the columns of granite and marble and other materials suited for his purpose. A falwa(or official decision of r an authority learned in the religious law) was procured against the lawfulness of holding religious worship in a place from which the inhabitants had been expelled against their will, and which had been built by forced labour, or with materials procured by destroying another building. The remarks of Al-Makrizy himself on the subject are instructive, as showing that, however sound in theory the fatwa might he, it proved too much to be a feasible rule in practice. He remarks that the title of the Aiyūbys to all the great palaces of Cairo was as defective as that of lialawun to the Dar al Kutbīya (the palace out of which the Maristan had been made), and that Nigmad-dīn had himself expelled the inhabitants of Rōda for the purpose of building his citadel, and, in fact, that the whole was a case of “the robber robbed and the spoiler spoiled.” As for forced labour, he exclaims—“Good God I tell me, do, for I know it not, which of them ever proceeded in any other way ? Only that some of them are more tyrannical than others.” Any one who has some acquaintance with the architectural history of Cairo must agree that Al-Makrīzy here represents the facts quite fairly. Nevertheless, in theory, a Mosque should be free from all suspicion of stolen land or materials and forced labour, and occasionally we find a founder insisting on these points.
page 538 note 1 Mac. ii. 377.
page 538 note 2 Mac. ii. 399 sqq.
page 538 note 3 Mac. ii. 364.
page 538 note 4 Mac. ii. 309.
page 539 note 1 Mac. ii. 269.
page 539 note 2 Baedeker's Handbook to Lower Egypt (German edition, 1877, p. 286), says: “To the middle piers, which fell in 1814, were attached marble tablets with Kftfy inscriptions which recorded the date of building: these also have gone to ruin.” A portion of one of these inscriptions was found last summer (that of 1890) in the course of taking away the modern walls which formed chambers between the arches. This has been put up against one of the piers. See Appendix II.
page 539 note 3 Al-Gabarty, iv. 211.
page 540 note 1 By Mr. E. S. Poole, in appendix ii. to the later editions of Lane's “Modern Egyptians.”
page 540 note 2 The isolated pointed arches in a part of the Mosque of 'Amr, are, says MrPoole, (loc. cit. p. 341)Google Scholar, “at least half a century later than the foundation of the mosque.” It is really absolutely certain that they cannot be earlier than A H. 212; i.e., 192 years later than the foundation. They are probably later than this, and may with great probability be attributed to the restoration by Khumārawaih, son of Aḥmad Ibn Ṭūlūn.
page 540 note 3 The inside of the arches was also originally covered by stucco ornamentation, as may be seen in Prisse d'Avenues (L'Art Arabe, Paris, 1877), vol. i. plate 1, where a view in the S. colonnade near the mimbar shows remains of decoration on the inside of a single arch: and since the last few months, on two or three arches of the W. colonnade e.g., 4th and 6th arches, counting from the S.), where, in pulling down the modern work which blocked up the arches, some of the latest coating of stucco has been removed. The two examples quoted are of different designs, but both obviously belong to the same time as the friezes here spoken of It has been remarked (Poole, Art of Saracens in Egypt, pp. 89, 90) that all these friezes are cut, not moulded, which prevents their becoming mechanical and monotonous.
page 541 note 1 It may be of interest to show what proportion of the Kur'ān is really contained in the frieze. There are 1988 metres of writing, 9 letters to a metre, and therefore 17,892 letters. The Kur'ān contains 323,671 letters, according to Arab authorities, and this divided by 17,892 gives us 17 odd, i.e. 
of the Kur'ān is actually contained in the frieze.
page 542 note 1 Indeed, every wall in the Mosque was so crowned; the inner and outer walls of the Mosque proper, and the outer walls of the Ziādas. Fragments remain to prove it in each case.
page 542 note 2 Not “calcareous stone,” as said by Coste, (Arch. Arabe, Paris, 1839, p. 32)Google Scholar. Mr. Stanley Lane Poole (Art. of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 61) also talks of “grilles of stone.”
page 543 note 1 How the dome could be so used is not very clear—it probably had an outside balcony at the base. The original Arabic (which seems to be Ibn 'Abd aẓ-Ẓahir's) is somewhat obscure.
page 544 note 1 i.e. in the N. Ziāda. The ḳibla end of a Mosque is always called the front, and the opposite end the back. This contradicts the way we should naturally regard the matter, but the point of view taken is that of the worshipper actually at prayer, who of course fronts the Kibla.
page 544 note 2 It is worth remarking that Al-'Azīz also built a Fauwāra in the Mosque of 'Amr, two years later than this date (Mac. ii. 249).
page 544 note 3 Mr. Stanley Lane Poole (Art of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 54) apparently takes the present dome to be that of Al-'Aziz, saying it was “built a century later than the mosque.” The whole building proclaims itself in its construction and details to belong to the time of Muhammad an Nāsir, or thereabouts. The style of the pendentives inside the dome, and the Nasnky inscription which surrounds it, are in themselves quite enough to render a Fatimy date impossible. But it is unnecessary to have recourse to such evidence, for a wooden inscription: on the outside, though so worn as only to be legible in parts, and so high up as to require a very long ladder to examine it, is conceived in the same general terms as that on Laglnī's pulpit, and contains (as I am assured by my friend M. van Berchem, who has had an opportunity of examining it closely) the name of Lāgīn as the founder.
page 544 note 4 This chamber is shown still in its place in Frith's photograph (Illust. No. 1).
page 545 note 1 Mac. ii. 416.
page 545 note 2 The cap was surmounted by a brazen boat, as is remarked by Pascal Coste (Archit. Arabe, ou Mon. du Kaire, Paris, 1859), p. 33. The illustration in the Expedition de l'Egypte (Atlas, Etat Mod. vol. i. plate 29) shows the minaret from the W. corner of the N. Ziada, crowned by the boat. This was a not unfrequent way of finishing off minarets, though the examples in Cairo are now very few. One is seen on the dome of the Imam ash-Shafa'y, in the Cemetery S. of the Capital. I have remarked them on provincial mosques, e.g. several at Rosetta They were occasionally filled with grain for the birds. We read in Al Gabarty (i. 25): “And on the 12th of Ramadān, in the year 1105 (= May 8,1694) there blew a great gale, with dust, which obscured the atmosphere, while the people were at Friday prayer, so that they thought the Day of judgment was come. And the ship on the minaret of the Mosque of Tūlūn (sic) fell down, and many houses were destroyed.” That there was a boat in Al-Makrīzy's time we see from ii. 268, where he says, “The common people say that the boat on the minaret turns with the sun, and this is not true, for it turns with the turning of the wind.” It is probable that the original minaret was crowned in the same way; and in one passage in Mac. ii. 267 there seems to be an allusion to it, where it is said that “the Christian who built the Mosque climbed up, and stood by the side of the brazen ship,” though the minaret itself is not mentioned.
page 547 note 1 Abu-l-Maḥāsin, a pupil of Al-Maḳrizy (died a.h. 874 = a.d. 1469), quotes the same story from a certain “Ahmad al Katib.” His words are: “And the workmen said to him, ‘On what model shall we make the minaret?’ Now he never trifled at all in Council; and he took a roll of paper and trifled with it, and some of it came out and some of it remained in his hand. And those present wondered. And he said, ‘Make the Minaret after this model.’ So they made it.” (Abn-l-Mahāin, Annales, ed. Juynboll, Leiden, 1856, ii. p. 8.)
page 547 note 2 Al-Ḳuḍā'y, as we have seen, died in a.h. 464 (a.d. 1062), i.e. in the time of the last Fātimy Caliph, just 200 years after the building of the Mosque.
page 548 note 1 Since this was written Mr. W. M. Conway has pointed out to me a picture of a ruined Ātesh-Bāh, or Firetower, at Firūzabfid (Media, Babylon and Persia, by Zénaïde A. Bagozin, pp. 151 and 153). This shows essentially the same construction as our minaret, and, taken in connexion with the statement, that the latter was built after the model of the minaret at Sāmarra, renders it probable that we have to look back to a Persian original, and that the Muslim muezzin of Ibn fulun called to prayer from the tower of the hated and despised Māgūsy. We should thus have an Eastern element entirely owing to the Prince, and independent of the shadowy Christian architect of whom we hear so much.
page 549 note 2 This last fact is related by Abu-l-Mahāsin (ed. Juynboll, Leiden, 1856) vol. ii. p. 19. “When his illness increased in violence, the Muslims went out into the desert with copies of the Kur'ān, and the Jews and Christians with the Pentateuch and the Gospels, and the teachers with the children, and prayed for him.” This interesting event is paralleled and illustrated by the Saltāl Istiskā', or prayer for water, which took place in times of drought within the memory of men still living. On these occasions the priests and people of all Beets joined in prayer together in the Mosque of 'Amr. See, Al-Gabarty, iv. 80.
page 550 note 1 The Mosque of Amr is of course an earlier foundation; but it has been repaired, like the Irishman's knife, till nothing original remains.
page 550 note 2 “Les arcs doubleaux de l'eglise de Saint-Front de Périgueux datent des dernières années du xe siècle, et sont déjá des ares brisés.”—Violet le Due. Diet. Arch. vi. 425.
page 550 note 3 Mac. i. 316–319.
page 551 note 1 For the troubles in the reign of Al-Mustanṣir, see especially Mac. i. 335–7.
page 551 note 2 Mac. ii. 269.
page 552 note 1 This “Maktab” still remains, in a ruined state. It is situated in the W. Ziāda, opposite the second intercolumnar space of the S. colonnade, reckoning from the Sahn (No. 9 in the plan). I find neither inscription, nor anything calling for remark. The school had a door (now blocked up) from the outside of the Ziāda.
page 552 note 2 Lane Poole, Art of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 63.
page 552 note 3 Not one on each side, as Mr. S. Lane-Poole (probably misled by Al-Maḳrīzy) states (Art of Saracens in Egypt, p. 57).
page 553 note 1 There are no less than four other quasi miḥrābs in the S. colonnade. Of these, two are on the two inside piers which now face the court. They are of plaster, and in a terrible state of ruin. On the right hand one, however, part of a Kūfy inscription, in letters of a much later type than those of the inscriptions contemporary with the foundation of the Mosque, is still legible, and the name and style of Al-Mustanṣir, the Fātimy Caliph, is clearly to be discerned. M. van Berchem reads the words “freedman of our Lord and Master Al-Mustansir billāh,” and is inclined to think they may refer to the Wazïr-al-Afdal (son of Badr-al-Gamāly). Of the left-hand miḥrab but little is remaining; but enough to show that it was put up at the same time as the other. The second pair of Miḥrābs are on the corresponding piers, two lines further S., on each side of the dikka. They are in so bad a state that it is impossible to say much of them; but they show Kūfy letters which would seem of a later date than the foundation of the Mosque: the type of decoration which they display is of a strange and somewhat primitive nature. It is high time that some accomplished mural palseographist made a study of the whole of these remains, getting leave to remove with care the whitewash which in some cases obscures the letters, since it is possible that the first mentioned might yet yield an historical record of importance —a few years more, and there will be no chance of deciphering anything.
page 553 note 2 Mr. S. Lane Poole (Art of the Saracens in Egypt, p. 58) says that “the back wall [in the S. colonnade] was once carefully decorated, though at present little remains of the original mosaic and colour which Al-Maḳrīzy says were used for its embellishment.” It is true that we should expect this end of the Mosque to have some further embellishments; but I find in Al-Maḳrīzy no hint to this effect, and at present (January. 1891) nothing remains to show that such decoration ever existed. As to Lagin's restoration, the words of Al-Maḳrīzy are sufficiently explicit: “He restored the mosque, and put an end to all the ruin that was in it and paved it, and plastered it” (ii. 268). In reference to the pulpit, Mr. Lane Poole falls into a strange mistake when he tells us that “in the present day there is a very inferior pulpit there, and this must have been introduced when the fine work of which these panels [in the S. K. M.] formed part was taken away.” He describes Lāgin's pulpit from Mr. Wild's drawing, made in 1845, and his description is that of the pulpit which still stands by the side of the Miḥrāb, which has to my personal knowledge stood there for the last ten years, and which we cannot doubt has stood there since a.d. 1296. The large inscription on the lintel, to which Mr. Lane Poole refers, is still there. It reads—
i.e.. “This pulpit (blessings on it!) was made by order of our Lord the Sultan, the Victorious King, Sword of the State and the Church, Lāgīn, freedman of the Victorious King [Kalāwūn], on the 10th of Ṣafar, in the year 696.” In the false spelling of the last word
, due no doubt to the artizan who executed the carving, it is interesting to observe the popular pronunciation which holds to this day.
page 554 note 1 Mac. ii. 269.
page 554 note 2 Aly Pasha Mubārak, Al-Khitat al-Gadīda, iv. 48. Perhaps, however, this was only the case with the E. Ziada, which has been used for some such purpose within my own recollection (within the last ten years).
page 554 note 3 Muḥammad Bey Abu-d'-Dahab was a great man in Egypt during the third quarter of the eighteenth century. He died in 1775, and his biography may be read in Al-Gabarty, i. 417, sqq.
page 554 note 4 “In the enormous quadrangle of the Mosque of Touloun, surrounded with the far-famed arcade of pointed arches, I found that many of them were in process of being walled up, to form cells for lunatic asylums.”—Paton, History of Egyptian Eevolution, ii. 322 (1st ed. Trübner, 1863). In the preface, the author says that his personal notes and observations were made in 1839, '40, '41, '42, '45, '46. The latest date possible is therefore 1846. Now Clot Bey, in his Aperҫu de l'Egypte, published in 1840, while mentioning the Mosque, says nothing of the poorhouse: a sufficient negative proof that it did not exist. Prisse d'Avennes, to whom I owe the fixing of the crime upon Clot Bey (L'Art Arabe d'apres les Monuments du Kaire, Paris, 1877, p. 95), puts the date of the poorhouse “not long before the death” of M. 'Aly, who died in '49, but had lost his reason a year before. We cannot, therefore, be far wrong in assigning 1846 as the date of the poorhouse. Nassau Senior (Conversations and Journals in Egypt and Malta, Sampson Low, 1882) must be speaking loosely when he writes, under date Feb. 24, 1856: ”The Mosque of the Tooloon … has just been converted into a poorhouse: the arcades are tenanted by about 100 families.” It is worth remarking that when Senior saw the Mosque, the court contained a “grove of palms and sycamores.”
page 555 note 1 This committee was established by decree of the Khedive, dated 18th December, 1881. See “Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art arabe,” Exercice, 1884: Rapports de la deuxième Commission, p. 10.
page 555 note 2 It is characteristic of Egyptian ways and manners that these tickets (printed in Arabic and French) call the Mosque “Mosquée Touloun” and 
(instead of Mosquée Ibn Touloun, etc.), as indeed is usual amongst the people, and excusable in the ignorant—though they might as well call the Prophet “Abdallah” as call Aḥmad “Ṭxūlūn.” A very common form in the people's mouth is Tailūn 
, instead of Tūlūn, and I remark that the name of a street in the neighbourhood of the Mosque has during the last few months actually stuck up as 
. The Mosque is still known to the inhabitants of the immediate neighbourhood as “the poorhouse,”—At-Takya 
page 557 note 1 Taking the first eight lines of the inscription, which are entirely Koranic, and in which we can therefore restore the missing words to a letter, we find that the surviving portion contains 200 letters, while that to be supplied contains 160, thus giving the proportion between the surviving and the missing of five to four exactly.
page 558 note 1 Indeed, it is the oldest, so far as I know, of any extent and of certain date. M. Marcel, in the elaborate essay on the Nilometer in the Expédition de l'Egypte (vol. xv. 392, sqq.), supposes parts of the surviving inscriptions of that monument to belong to Al-Ma'mūn, a.h. 199 (a.d. 814), and to the two restorations under Al-Mutawakkil, in a.h. 233 (a.d. 847), and a.h. 247 (a.d. 861) respectively. Of these, the last belongs to the reign of Aḥmad himself. In any case, they consist of very few words. I know of no other inscriptions of so early a date. There are early Fāṭtimy inscriptions on the minarets of Al-Hākim (inside the later pylonic-looking buttresses, which belong to Baibars Gāshenkīr), and late Fāṭtimy ones on the Bab an Naṣr (deciphered by Mr.Kay, Journal of Asiatic Soc. Vol. XVIII. Part 1), and on the Guyūshy Mosque (published by M. van Berchem, Mémoires de l'lnstitut Egyptien, vol. ii.): these are of the dates of a.h. 480 (= a.d. 1087) and a.h. 498 (= a.d. 1104) respectively.
page 559 note 1 These words are conjecturally supplied, to fit the first word of the next line.
page 560 note 1 Here begins the “Throne-verse,” Ḳur'ān ii, 254. (The translation of the Ḳoranic passages is mostly from Sale.)
page 560 note 2 Here begins Ḳur'ān xlviii. 29.
page 561 note 1 Here begins Ḳur'ān iii. 110.
page 561 note 2 Here begins Ḳur'ān ix. 18.
page 561 note 3 Here begins the historical part of the inscription. Aḥmad was known as Abu-l'-Abbās, “the father of al-'Abbās,” after his rebellious son, of whom we have heard.
page 561 note 4 The italicized words are a conjecture, founded on the first word of the next line. “Lord of clear victory” is a phrase in the style of such inscriptions, and is founded on Ḳur'ān xlviii. 1.
page 561 note 5 Here begins Ḳur'ān xxiv. 36.
page 562 note 1 Ramaḍān, a.h. 265, when the Mosque was dedicated, began on the 27th of April, a.d. 879. This inscription is therefore more than 1000 years old.
page 562 note 2 Ḳur'ān xxxvii. 180 (down to “of the worlds.”) The rest, being a fixed formula, can be safely filled up.