Amr ibn al-As Mosque

This guide to Amr ibn al-As Mosque in Cairo opens with a tradition about a dove nesting in a general's war tent on the eve of his march on Alexandria around 641, and the order he gave his puzzled soldiers before riding off. You'll hear how that spared patch of riverbank later shaped his choice of capital and where he chose to raise a mosque, and what the first, humble version of that building was actually made of. Listen for how many centuries of governors and fires it took to reach the stone standing here today.