Today, I had a free morning so I decided to sleep in. When I woke up, I started on my Yacoubian Building paper. I was about half way done when I got hungry so Noureen and I went to Hardee’s for lunch. After lunch, we headed to Islamic Cairo to conduct our tour for the next paper. We had some difficulty explaining to the cab driver exactly where we wanted to go because when we told him what specific street we wanted to be dropped off at in Bab Zuwayla, he said that he would not be able to take his taxi into that street. So we had to figure out another street nearby where we could get dropped off.
Once the cab driver dropped us off, we found our way to the beginning of the tour as mentioned in our guide book Historic Cairo. The first stop was Mosque of Atinbugha al- Maridani. We saw a mosque that we thought was the one we were looking for, but we couldn’t find out for sure because there was no sign indicating the name of the mosque. We went inside anyway and took pictures, but were very doubtful that this was the mosque from the book that we needed to visit. As we walked to a nearby mosque, we realized that that was actually the Mosque of Atinbugha al- Maridani because it had all the features mentioned in the book, even though this mosque had no sign either.
We were happy that we were on the right track in terms of the tour, but there were so many other things bothering us. For example, it had rained earlier in the day so the dusty roads were now extremely muddy and slippery. My sneakers and pants had so much mud on them when I got back to the hotel room. In addition, even though the streets were extremely narrow, there were still cars, trucks, and motorcycles swishing past us, constantly honking. I think we were all more bothered by the constant loud honking than the mud—sometimes the driver didn’t even need to honk, but honked anyway.
Although we were going in the right direction, we had a lot of trouble searching for the mosques in the guide book because most of them were not labeled and some of them were so dilapidated that we were not even allowed to stand around them. We were disappointed with the mosques we saw on this tour because after seeing the Mosque of Ibn Tulun or Barquq, these mosques seemed very unappealing and unpleasant. Most of them were either completely closed down and the ones that weren’t needed major upkeep.
We ended the tour at the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, which was the most beautiful of all the mosques we’d seen that day and it was one of the mosques we’d seen earlier with the class. However, at night time it was especially beautiful because it was illuminated with a green light, which gave it an alluring glow.
Group picture in front of the beautifully lit Sultan Hassan Mosque at night
Once the cab driver dropped us off, we found our way to the beginning of the tour as mentioned in our guide book Historic Cairo. The first stop was Mosque of Atinbugha al- Maridani. We saw a mosque that we thought was the one we were looking for, but we couldn’t find out for sure because there was no sign indicating the name of the mosque. We went inside anyway and took pictures, but were very doubtful that this was the mosque from the book that we needed to visit. As we walked to a nearby mosque, we realized that that was actually the Mosque of Atinbugha al- Maridani because it had all the features mentioned in the book, even though this mosque had no sign either.
We were happy that we were on the right track in terms of the tour, but there were so many other things bothering us. For example, it had rained earlier in the day so the dusty roads were now extremely muddy and slippery. My sneakers and pants had so much mud on them when I got back to the hotel room. In addition, even though the streets were extremely narrow, there were still cars, trucks, and motorcycles swishing past us, constantly honking. I think we were all more bothered by the constant loud honking than the mud—sometimes the driver didn’t even need to honk, but honked anyway.
Although we were going in the right direction, we had a lot of trouble searching for the mosques in the guide book because most of them were not labeled and some of them were so dilapidated that we were not even allowed to stand around them. We were disappointed with the mosques we saw on this tour because after seeing the Mosque of Ibn Tulun or Barquq, these mosques seemed very unappealing and unpleasant. Most of them were either completely closed down and the ones that weren’t needed major upkeep.
We ended the tour at the Mosque of Sultan Hassan, which was the most beautiful of all the mosques we’d seen that day and it was one of the mosques we’d seen earlier with the class. However, at night time it was especially beautiful because it was illuminated with a green light, which gave it an alluring glow.
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