Al-Aqmar Mosque | Gray Mosque
Al-Aqmar Mosque was established during the reign of the caliph, the command of the provisions of God, Abu Ali Mansour bin Ahmed, at the hands of his minister, Muhammad bin Fatik bin Mukhtar bin Hassan bin Tammam, historically known as “Abu Abdullah Al-Mamun bin Al-Bata’ihi”, and he was known as Al-Bata’ihi in relation to his origins that belong to Al-Bataeh in Iraq, located between Basra and Kufa.
Al-Mamun al-Batahi brought the best builders and engineers during the Fatimid era at that time to build the Al-Aqmar Mosque in the year 519 AH / 1125 AD, to turn the mosque into a timeless architectural masterpiece. And a plant engraved in stone, to make it appear to the observers as bright as the sun, bearing the name of Imam Ali bin Abi Talib inside it, surrounded by rings engraved on it in Kufic script: In the name of God, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful.
The historian Taqi al-Din al-Maqrizi said about him: “The mosque was built in the place of one of the monasteries that were called the Well of Greatness because it contained the bones of some Coptic martyrs.” The moon and the façade are adorned with seven shapes of suns of different sizes, and there is a protrusion that takes the form of two towers, in the middle of which is a corridor leading to the door.
The qiblah of the mosque was built parallel to the street organization line instead of being parallel to the courtyard of the mosque so that the qiblah would be in a correct position. An ornate keffiyeh carried on ancient marble columns with molded bases.
After the end of the Fatimid state, the Al-Aqmar Mosque suffered neglect, like many mosques that were deliberately neglected by the Ayyubid state, until it returned to the circle of interest again during the era of the Mamluk state, specifically during the reign of Sultan Al-Zafir Saif Al-Din Barquq in the year 799 AH / 1397 AD, by Prince Abu Al-Mualla Belbuga bin Abdullah Al-Salmi, who was known about Sufism and the love of Ahl al-Bayt, so he restored life to the Al-Aqmar Mosque, renewed the minaret, the pulpit and the animal basin next to it, and established a pool of water suspended in the courtyard, and recorded what he did of the renovations of the mosque’s upper mihrab and its pulpit.
Then the mosque witnessed several stages of restoration after that, including through the Committee for the Preservation of Arab Antiquities, which preserved its decorations in 1928, and the Supreme Council of Antiquities conducted another restoration of the mosque and removed the buildings that obscured its facade from passers-by.
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