Al-Azhar Mosque
Al-Azhar Mosque (Arabic: الجامع الأزهر, romanized: al-Jāmiʿ al-ʾAzhar, lit. 'The Resplendent Congregational Mosque', Egyptian Arabic: جامع الأزهر, romanized: Gāmiʿ el-ʾazhar), known in Egypt simply as al-Azhar, is a mosque in Cairo, Egypt in the historic Islamic core of the city. Commissioned as the new capital of the Fatimid Caliphate in 970, it was the first mosque established in a city that eventually earned the nickname "the City of a Thousand Minarets".[b] Its name is usually thought to derive from az-Zahrāʾ (lit. 'the shining one'), a title given to Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad.
"Al-Azhar" redirects here. For other uses, see Al-Azhar (disambiguation).Al-Azhar Mosque
After its dedication in 972, and with the hiring by mosque authorities of 35 scholars in 989, the mosque slowly developed into what it is today.
The affiliated Al-Azhar University is the second oldest continuously run one in the world after Al-Qarawiyyin in Idrisid Fes. It has long been regarded as the foremost institution in the Islamic world for the study of Sunni theology and sharia, or Islamic law. In 1961, the university, integrated within the mosque as part of a mosque school since its inception, was nationalized and officially designated an independent university, Al-Azhar Al Sharif, following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952.
Over the course of its over a millennium-long history, the mosque has been alternately neglected and highly regarded. Because it was founded as a Shiite Ismaili institution, Saladin and the Sunni Ayyubid dynasty that he founded shunned al-Azhar, removing its status as a congregational mosque and denying stipends to students and teachers at its school. These moves were reversed under the Mamluk Sultanate, under whose rule numerous expansions and renovations took place. Later rulers of Egypt showed differing degrees of deference to the mosque and provided widely varying levels of financial assistance, both to the school and to the upkeep of the mosque. Today, al-Azhar remains a deeply influential institution in Egyptian society that is highly revered in the Sunni Muslim world and a symbol of Islamic Egypt.
Name[edit]
The city of Cairo was established by the Fatimid general Jawhar al-Siqilli, on behalf of the Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz, following the Fatimid conquest of Egypt in 969. It was originally named al-Manṣūriyya (المنصورية) after the prior seat of the Fatimid caliphate, al-Mansuriyya in modern Tunisia. The mosque, first used in 972, may have initially been named Jāmiʿ al-Manṣūriyya (جامع المنصورية, "the mosque of Mansuriyya"), as was common practice at the time. It was al-Mu'izz who renamed the city al-Qāhira (القاهرة, "the Victorious"). The name of the mosque thus became Jāmiʿ al-Qāhira (جامع القاهرة, "the mosque of Cairo"), the first transcribed in Arabic sources.[2]
The mosque acquired its current name, al-ʾAzhar, sometime between the caliphate of al-Mu'izz and the end of the reign of the second Fatimid caliph in Egypt, al-Aziz Billah (r. 975–996).[2] ʾAzhar is the masculine form for zahrāʾ, meaning "splendid" or "most resplendent". Zahrāʾ is an epithet applied to Muhammad's daughter Fatimah,[3] wife of caliph Ali. She was claimed as the ancestress of al-Mu'izz and the imams of the Fatimid dynasty; one theory is that her epithet is the source for the name al-ʾAzhar.[4][5] The theory, however, is not confirmed in any Arabic source and its plausibility has been both supported and denied by later Western sources.[6]
An alternative theory is that the mosque's name is derived from the names given by the Fatimid caliphs to their palaces. Those near the mosque were collectively named al-Quṣūr al-Zāhira (القصور الزاهرة, "the Brilliant Palaces") by al-Aziz Billah, and the royal gardens were named after another derivative of the word zahra. The palaces had been completed and named prior to the mosque changing its name from Jāmiʿ al-Qāhira to al-ʾAzhar.[2][7]
The word Jāmiʿ is derived from the Arabic root word jamaʿa (g-m-ʿ), meaning "to gather". The word is used for large congregational mosques. While in classical Arabic the name for al-Azhar remains Jāmiʿ al-ʾAzhar, the pronunciation of the word Jāmiʿ changes to Gāmaʿ in Egyptian Arabic.[c]