The complex of Sultan Al-Ghuri consists of two main buildings facing each other in Al-Muizz li-din-Allah street. One of the buildings is a mosque and a madrasa, while the other contains mausoleums, a khanqah, a sabil and a kuttab. The complex was built by Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri between 1503 and 1505.

Qansuh al-Ghuri was the second to last of the Mamluk sultans, before the Mamluks lost their reign to the Ottomans. He came to be a sultan after being chosen by the other prominent Mamluks to be sultan. He came after a series of unfortunate sultans who had turbulent reigns and at a time when the political atmosphere in Egypt was unstable, to the point that most of the sultans before him had their reigns ended either by them being murdered or imprisoned. This was due to the constant scheming and plotting that the Mamluks did whenever they wanted to get rid of the sultan when their interests were slowed by him. After Tuman bay I was overthrown after reigning for around a hundred days only, the Mamluks elected Qansuh al-Ghuri to be the new sultan, thinking that he was an agreeable man and not a very strong one, which should make him easily overthrown in case the Mamluks want to. Qansuh al-Ghuri didn’t want to be sultan, however, after he got his new position, he proved to be a much more ruthless sultan than the Mamluks thought him to be, and he reigned over Egypt for 15 years, until he died in battle with the Ottomans.

Al-Ghuri was a man of artistic taste. He was fond of poetry and music and was a patron of architecture. He began building his complex in 1503, two years after seizing power. He seized the land from one of the major ministers of the preceding sultan, where the mosque and madrasa were already under construction. Al-Ghuri demolished the built structure and ordered it to be rebuilt on a larger scale. The complex consists of buildings divided on two sides of al-Muizz street, and joined together by a wooden ceiling. The mosque/madrasa building has three facades, with the most important being the eastern one, which lies on Al-Muizz street and has the main entrance. The mosque has four perpendicular iwans and in the middle lies a courtyard. The iwans and the courtyard are covered in beautiful colored tiles. The eastern iwan is the one that has the qibla (the qibla is the direction that muslims face when praying) and in its center is the mihrab and to the mihrab’s right is the minbar, which is made of wood. The mosque has a minaret that is considered one of the tallest in Cairo. It is a square Andalusian-style minaret that consists of four levels. The first two levels have beautiful decorations and small inscriptions. The fourth level has five mihrab-shaped structures, which remain in this form since 1881. The original fourth level consisted of four mihrab-shaped heads, but were quickly replaced with two heads due to the heaviness of the four heads which would have damaged the minaret, and the two headed structures were then replaced in 1881 with the current ones.

As for the other main building, it consists, as mentioned before, of a funerary compound, a sabil, a khanqah and a kuttab. The sabil, in arabic countries, is like a public water serving structure, which is designed to serve the common people, while the khankah is a hall where sufis hold their festivals and a kuttab is like a modern elementary school. This building also was intended as a living home, so it contains a living compound, as well as the sultan’s throne. This building is a very interesting one, as when one wanders in it, one cannot help but feel like being taken to the time of the Mamluks. The building from the inside is rich in marble and granite decorations and colored windows. The architect of the building also designed its various components, such as the mausoleums and the common living elements, to be in complementary sizes and to give a feel of belonging to the same origin.

This complex, as a whole, might not be the oldest one in Cairo, but it is certainly one of the richest and most ambitious projects of the old city.