Aqsunqur Mosque or Mosque of Ibrahim Agha Mustahfizan is one of the “blue mosques” present in several places around the world. This mosque, which lies in Bab el-Wazir street in Darb el-Ahmar area of Old Cairo, was built in the Mamluk era by the emir Aqsunqur, particularly in the year of 1347. Aqsunqur was a prominent Mamluk emir and was the son-in-law of the sultan Al-Nasser Muhammed. Aqsunqur was the governor of Tripoli prior to coming to Cairo, which explains the heavy Syrian architectural style of this mosque. The mosque was built around the mausoleum of the late sultan al-Ashraf Kujuk, which was built in 1341. The mosque had a big reconstruction phase in the 15th, when the emir Ibrahim Agha, who was an Ottoman emir and of the superior figures ahead of the Ottoman army in Egypt, started to rebuild some parts of the mosque after it was damaged due to an earthquake that hit Cairo in that time.

The mosque has a general layout of a central courtyard surrounded by four pillared arcades, which are known as riwaqs. The biggest riwaq is the one that has the mihrab and minbar. The mosque has one minaret and five domes. The domes of the mosque are carried on brick squinches, and one of them has a pendentive below each squinch. The mosque used to employ cross-vaulting in the riwaqs, but this was removed in the reconstruction done by Ibrahim Agha. One of the most important features of the mosque, is its decorative blue and green tiles on the eastern riwaq, which were added by Ibrahim Agha after importing the tiles from Constantinople and Damascus. Another one of the beautiful features of this mosque, is the marble minbar. It is beautifully and colorfully decorated with stone inserts of light gray, salmon, green and plum colors. It is one of the oldest and rare marble minbars in Cairo, and it is one if the original features of the mosque from the time of its original founder. The mosque also contains the mausoleums of its founder Aqsunqur, his sons, some of sultan Al-Nasser Muhammed’s children and Ibrahim Agha.