The Fatimid Mosque in St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt | Facts, History, Map, Design of Architectural Mosques Heritage in Islamic Egypt and more…
The history of the construction of the Fatimid Mosque at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai, Egypt, information about the most important features of religious tourism, the Mosque of El-Hakem Be’amr Ellah in St. Catherine’s Church, which is more than 1000 years old and over.
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The Fatimid Mosque
A detailed trip inside the El-Hakem Mosque in St. Catherine’s Monastery, see Egypt’s most important Islamic monuments, and visit the Holy Towa Valley
Inside St. Catherine’s Monastery, there is an ancient mosque, more than 1,000 years old, which has asked several questions about the reality of this mosque, whether it is an attempt to appease Muslim leaders, prevent them from demolishing the monastery or serving the Muslims themselves who guarded the monastery.
The mosque in question is the Mosque of El-Hakem Be’amr Ellah, located inside the Monastery of St. Catherine.
About the Fatimid Mosque in St. Catherine’s Monastery, El-Hakem Be’amr Ellah Mosque
A number of Western historians have linked the construction of this Fatimid mosque inside St. Catherine’s Monastery to a quand incident of armed people attacking the monastery to loot it and demolish its treasures, with some historians stating that El-Hakem Be’amr Ellah wanted to demolish the monastery of St. Catherine in 1008 and sent a company of soldiers, but the monks told them that the monastery had a mosque where prayers were held and therefore forbidden to demolish it, so the soldiers returned from where they came from.
This already happened in the same year, fearing that El-Hakem’s attempt to demolish the church again would be repeated, and it was called the El-Hakem Mosque, and has remained until now inside the monastery of St. Catherine.
According to another account, the mosque was originally a 6th century building, when Emperor Justinian built the monastery, and was used as a dining room.
He said the monks turned the building into a formal mosque in record time, fearing that the monastery would be damaged by the sedition that existed at the time between Muslims and Christians.
A third account says that the monks may have agreed to turn this building into a mosque for the Muslim pilgrims the monastery hosted on their pilgrimage to Mecca.
Highlights of St. Catherine’s Fatimid Mosque, El-Hakem Be’amr Ellah Mosque
One of the most important monuments of the mosque is the minaret of the mosque, where many Islamic texts are engraved on the façade and pulpit of the mosque and written in Kufic script and composed of six lines.
The mosque also has a candlestick chair with a text written with the name of Prince Abou al-Mansour Anushkin al-Amri, the founder of the mosque.
The mosque also has a place of ablution and another for prayer, where Muslims tasked with defending the monastery, as well as Muslims who live on the outskirts of the monastery and carry its supplies from the ports of Suez and Tor, as well as pilgrims on their way to Mecca, cross the Holy Mountain region to be blessed.
Interestingly, Christian monks took care of the mosque and restored it through the ages whenever it needed to be restored.
He said monks or Muslims involved in the South Sinai Mosque issued permits from imams and jurists in Egypt on the basis of a fatwa allowing monks to renovate the mosque at their own expense because it could not be restored by others.
The archives of the monastery refer to this information, which contains fatwas of jurists of El-Azhar, as well as document 229, which dates to the nineteenth century and gives a complete picture of affection, solidarity between monks and Muslims in this regard.
Visit of the Fatimid Mosque of St. Catherine, the Mosque of El-Hakem Be’amr Ellah
The mosque can be visited at any time of the day, but prayers are no longer held there.
