Al-Ashraf Barsbay Mosque

This early fifteenth-century Mamluk mosque and madrasa on al-Muizz Street was built by Sultan Barsbay in the commercial heart of the old city. Its facade of banded stone and a slender minaret rise above the surrounding shops, and the interior contains a fine marble floor, an inlaid mihrab and colored glass windows. The complex included a mausoleum and served the busy trading quarter around it. Set among a succession of royal foundations along the same street, it illustrates the continuous Mamluk patronage that shaped medieval Cairo.