Al-Azhar Mosque
Fatimid-era mosque and the world's oldest continuously operating university.
Location
About this audio guide
This guide to Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo opens with cannon fire aimed at the mosque itself, ordered by Napoleon Bonaparte in October 1798 after Cairo rose against the French occupation. It follows the fighters who ran for the courtyard for safety, the French troops who rode their horses in after them, and the scholars who paid for it. It also reaches back further, to Saladin's earlier purge of the mosque a Fatimid caliph had founded eight centuries before, and to the university that kept teaching through it all.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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