HOLDING IT ALL TOGETHER

A venerable Mosque gets a new lease on life thanks to an innovative and discrete anchor system

by James R. Marshall

The Madrasa and Kangah of Sultan al-Ghouri (Madrasa Mosque) is one of Cairo's most venerable group of buildings. The complex was built in the 1500's during the reign of the last Mamaluk sultan, who died in 1516 in battle against the Ottoman Turks. The Sultan's funerary complex is in Old Cairo; on it's west side is a kanqah and mausoleum, as well as a sabil kuttab. The minaret is a four-story rectangle about 50 metres (164ft) high. With its strong features, bold design, marble panels, and intricate geometries carved into the arches and ceiling, the Madrasa Mosque represents the last great flowering of Mamaluk art. The Mosque had functioned as both a mosque and madrasa continuously since its construction. Today, the Madrasa is the oldest teaching mosque in Cairo.

Time, seismic forces and human beings, however, have not been kind to al-Ghouri. In fact, by the end of the 20th century, the mosque was in a very delicate state of equilibrium indeed. Though it has survived nearly 500 years, the toll of a rising water table, general neglect and earthquakes, particularly the big one of 1992, has brought the structure to the point of collapse. The mosque's floor undulated dramatically, and all of its walls showed severe fractures. Adding insult to injury, problems in the external walls had been exacerbated by shopkeepers enlarging the space available for the selling their wares by demolishing sections of masonry at the ground floor level making the earthquake damage ever worse than it might otherwise have been.

The condition of the mosque was a great challenge facing the Egyptian Antiquities Organization, which is charged with the care of the complex. Urgent measures were required to reintroduce some structural strength and rigidity into the building. As a first step, the Madrasa was underpinned using a system of micropiling. The very high walls were still unrestrained and very vulnerable to the lateral forces that would be generated by the next inevitable earthquake. The large arched openings in the mosque are points of particular weakness. The walls are constructed of two opposing sandstone faces with the space between filled with rubble. It remained to tie the elements of the superstructure together in a way that would be strong and permanent and nearly invisible to preserve the historical and aesthetic aspects of the building.