Al-Rifa'i Mosque

The Al-Rifa'i Mosque wears a limestone facade carved with intricate geometric patterns that mimic the Mamluk style of the fourteenth century, though the building dates only to the early twentieth. Khushyar Hanim, the mother of Khedive Ismail, commissioned the structure in eighteen sixty-nine to house the tomb of the medieval saint Ahmad al-Rifa'i. Construction spanned forty-three years, outlasting both the patron and the architect, Husayn Fahmi Pasha, who died after falling from the building’s scaffolding during the project.