The Mosque and Mausoleum of Imam al-Layth bin Sa‘ad () is a small Sunni Islam mosque and mausoleum dedicated to the Muslim jurist Imam Al-Layth bin Sa'ad, located in the southern portion of the City of the Dead (Cairo) of the Dead near to the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i, in Cairo, Egypt.
A shrine was first built in , four centuries after the death of Imam al-Layth in 791 CE, and has slowly expanded over time. Today the site functions as a regular mosque and sees a steady stream of visitors and pilgrims who come to pay their respects to Imam al-Layth.
Name The site is named after the Egyptian jurist and imam Imam al-Layth bin Sa‘d whose full title, according to his tombstone, was al-Layth bin Sa’ad bin Abd al-Rahman Abu al-Harith al-Misri the Mufti of the Egyptians. The site appears to have sat unnoticed for four centuries until it was successively patronised by Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman rulers and began to gain a name and reputation as a pilgrimage site.
History Imam al-Layth died in and, according to Al-Maqrizi who provides most of the historical information that we have about the first few centuries in the development of the shrine, was buried with a simple gravestone at the far (southern) end of an area called the Pearl Domes, most likely referring to what is called today the Southern Cemetery (or in Arabic [al-qarāfa]).Tillier, M. (2022) ‘Local Tradition and Imperial Legal Policy under the Umayyads: The Evolution of the Early Egyptian School of Law’, in J. Bruning, J.H.M. de Jong, and P.M. Sijpesteijn (eds.) Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean World: From Constantinople to Baghdad, 500-1000 CE. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 131–168. Al-Maqrizi claims that the first person to build some sort of significant structure around the grave was Abu Zayd al-Misri in . Unfortunately, no foundation inscription appears to have survived from the 13th century nor is it mentioned in any textual sources.
The reason for its construction may be clearer however if historical context is taken into account. Earlier in the Ayyubid period Salah al-Din sanctioned the construction of a mausoleum for Imam Al-Shafi'i under the auspices of the sheikh Najm al-Din al-Khabushani that would be finished in the early 13th century. This architectural project appears to be a special favour to al-Khabushani which he used the opportunity to promote the Ash'ari theological view as much as he sought to quietly purge that of the Isma'ili Fatimid dynasty.Stephanie Mulder, “The Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafiʿi”, Muqarnas 23 (2006), pp.24-6. In this context, the decision to build a shrine around the Imam al-Layth is based on the Imam's symbolic importance as the founder of an Ash’ari/rationalist school of Islamic law. Based on the hoards of visitors to the shrine of Imam al-Shafi’i nearby the Ayyubid patrons would have assumed that the shrine of Imam al-Layth would also attract pilgrims.
This point of attracting pilgrims would continue to play importance into the Mamluk period where patronage of the site continued under three sultans; Qalawun, Faraj ibn Barquq, and Al-Mu'ayyad Shaykh, leaving the building with the majority of its medieval core that we see today apart from the four marble Ayyubid columns holding up the large dome. Al-Maqrizi's sources of information for the shrine suggests that literature was circulating in the Mamluk period that ascribed importance to the site as a pilgrimage destination. Contemporary to his own lifetime, al-Maqrizi also reports the various activities, for better or for worse, of the pilgrims who frequent the site:يجتمع بهذا القبة في ليلة كلّ سبت جماعة من القرّاء، فيتلون القرآن الكريم تلاوة حسنة حتى يختسموا ختمة كاملة عند السحر، ويقصد المبيت عندهم للتبرّك بقراءة القرآن عدّة من الناس، ثم تفاحش الجمع، وأقبل النساء والأحداث والغوغاء، فصار أمرا منكرا، لا ينصتون لقراءة ولا يتعظون بمواعظ، بل يحدث منهم على القبور ما لا يجوز. ثم زادوا في التعدّي حتى حفروا ما هنالك خارج القبة من القبور، وبنوا مباني اتخذوها مراحيض وسقايات ماءEvery Saturday evening a group of Quran readers gather at the dome chamber to recite the Quran in full late into the night. Some people seek blessings by staying overnight and reading the Quran. Many people behave obscenely, take an interest in the women, the young men, and the general riffraff making the whole thing objectionable. They don't listen to the Quran nor take heed of the sermons but do things at the domes that aren't permissible. Their excesses became more frequent to the extent that they dug around some of the domes and built structures to be used as toilets and water fountains.In the early 18th century there seems to have been a revival of interest in the shrine of Imam al-Layth. In 1726 the Ottoman amir Musa Jurbaji Mirza completed a renovation and decorative programme around the main shrine, and most likely commissioned the small collection of paintings in the smaller shrine of Imam al-Layth's son. Based on the style it is most likely that the amir added the wooden enclosure inlaid with mother of pearl and according to the inscriptions we know that he was the patron of the expansive paintings underneath the canopy of the enclosure, the rim of the dome's square base, and the Quranic inscriptions along the stone wall on the western wall opposite the shrine.
Architecture
Layout What remains of the medieval core of the building appears to be mostly Ayyubid and Mamluk in origin. Entrance to the site is from the north by a large stone portal flanked by two mastabas and a square-cut door. Inside is a long straight room with a high wooden beamed ceiling where today the southern wall has been knocked down to make room for a larger prayer space. The medieval core is made mostly of ashlar.
To the west is a small opening that leads one step down into the main mausoleum. This room is square and is dominated in the centre by the shrine of the Imam inside, an elaborately decorated wooden enclosure under a large dome supported by four marble columns. On the south are three mihrabs of which the central only exists as a single layer of stone from the original wall that was knocked through to make a larger prayer space today. The two mihrabs to the left and right are intact both with engaged columns and arches whose stones are painted alternately red and white.
To the east is a small domed room containing another, smaller, shrine. The northern wall is neither perpendicular nor parallel to the remainder of the original medieval structure and is made of red brick with supporting wooden beams providing some hints about the original layout of the Ayyubid building. The room contains an ancient slab of stone inscribed in Kufic most likely dating from the Ayyubid period whilst the walls bear some beautiful paintings of plant life in the Ottoman style.
Portal At the entrance to the medieval core of the building is a grand portal made of large square-cut blocks of the yellow limestone that is characteristic of many of the pre-modern buildings around Cairo. The portal appears striped as alternate layers of stone are covered with a thin layer of plaster giving them a grainy white colour. Projecting out of either side of the door are two mastabas.
At head height is a horizontal band of inscription in the thuluth script from the reign of Qansuh al-Ghawri (1501-1516) that reads:أمر بإنشاء هذا الباب الشريف من فضل الله تعالى سيدنا ومولانا وملك رقابنا السلطان المالك الملك الأشرف أبو النصر قانصوه الغورى عز نصره وكان الفراغ من هذا المكان في مستهل رجب الفرد سنة إحدى عشرة وتسعمائة.Through the grace of God the Sublime, our lord and master, dominant over us, the Sultan, the sovereign, al-Malik al-Ashraf Abu al-Nasr Qansuh al-Ghawri, may his victory be glorified, ordered the construction of this noble portal. The completion of this edifice was at the beginning of Rajab al-Fard in .
This inscription shows that the construction of the portal was one of the later Mamluk additions to the mausoleum. Qansuh al-Ghawri's patronage of the portal is reinforced by the placement of two identical epigraphic blazons just underneath the plain tympanum of the arch and adjacent to the left and right walls which read “the sultan al-Malik al-Ashraf Qansuh al-Ghawri may his victory be glorified”. Under each roundel is a rectangular stucco panel that plays with an intricate geometric pattern based on a dodecagon characteristic of the complexity of late Mamluk geometric decoration.
The lintel above the doorway appears as a white façade of seven blocks of stone locked into place by a joggled voussoir. Meanwhile, the top of the doorway itself is embellished by a simple double-tiered muqarnas pattern. On the interior of the portal is a magnificently carved wooden double door (upper image) that plays with a complex geometric pattern of a dodecagon to create a variety of shapes (arrows, hexagons, triangles) that are filled with arabesque carvings. The design is identical to a double door at the nearby mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi’i (lower image) that is the second (inner) of a double set of doors at the entrance to the mausoleum. The inscription spread across the four rectangular panels at the top and bottom of the Imam al-Layth door confirm its provenance from Imam al-Shafi’i. It reads that “al-Shafi’i is the Imam of all the people” and that the door was completed in roughly thirty years before the foundation of the mausoleum of Imam al-Layth. In fact, the exact same inscription exists on the aforementioned door at the Mausoleum Imam al-Shafi’i suggesting that the door moved to Imam al-Layth was the first (outer) one.
Dome
Above the main shrine of Imam al-Layth is a lofty dome that stands on four slim marble columns arranged as the four vertices of a square space containing the wooden structure of the shrine. Each column stands on a bevelled limestone pedestal above which the plinth is inscribed with short supplications in plain Kufic script that read: ColumnArabic InscriptionEnglish TranslationSW (lower)
NE (upper)
NW (lower)
SE noneبركة كاملة
نعمة شاملةComplete blessings
Complete goodness The fact that these columns are carved in the Kufic script is an indication that they originate from the Ayyubid era as Kufic largely went out of fashion in the Mamluk period and naskh or thuluth took its place. The base of the marble column has a bevelled octagonal shape around which wraps a band of interlacing geometric patterns. Above the band is a bulbous area which leads into the main column that is cylindrical in shape. The roof of the wooden enclosure is supported by the marble columns but a stacked stone pillar takes the height of the column up to the square base of the pendentive dome.
Around the four interior sides of the base of the dome are four painted wooden panels dating from the renovations of Musa Jurbaji Mirza in 1726 that read “in the name of God the most Compassionate the most Merciful [Quran] the most Great spoke the Truth as did His Prophet. May God pray for Muhammad, his family and his companions and grant them salvation.” This verse above the resting place of a revered and pious individual is standard in that its themes match the quest for deliverance and mercy of he who lies below. Above the panels the zone of transition begins almost immediately in the four squinches that feature a tiered muqarnas pattern. The space between each squinch contains a stacked arch window grill that allows light to pass into the chamber below. Above the squinches sits the drum of the dome punctuated by eight arched windows which leads into the simple but elegant pointed dome sporting a stacked copper finial.