Dina Ishak Bakhoum
The protagonist of this story is the minbar (pulpit) of the mosque/madrasa of Tatar al-Ḥijaziyya (Fig. 1), now housed at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo (known earlier as the Museum of Arab Art). The story of its journey to the museum is not on display to visitors, who may assume that it directly came from its original mosque. Its account, narrated here, did not however start by attempting to trace its motion to the museum, but it began with a research on the restoration of a different minbar, namely that of the Mamluk mosque of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh (1415-1420) in Cairo.
The Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe (1881-1950s; hereafter Comité) was established in Egypt under the Ministry of Awqāf (religious endowments) to work on inventorying and restoring the country’s Islamic art and architecture. Among the elements restored by the Comité are minbars. Minbars are placed on the right side of the miḥrāb, a concave niche indicating the prayer orientation towards Mecca (a.k.a the qibla orientation). They are composed of two side flanks (initially having no side doors, but since the Burgī Mamluk period (1382-1517) with side doors) and a front portal leading to a staircase that ends with a platform covered with a canopy where the preacher would stand to deliver the Friday sermon. The flanks show different decorative motifs, predominantly the star pattern, whose polygons were either intricately carved or inlaid using a technique referred to as “Persian mosaics” and showing a variety of floral and geometric schemes.
The minbars of several mosques were, prior to the Comité’s interventions, in a deteriorated state due to natural as well as human factors, including vandalism, leading to the loss of some of their decorative and structural elements. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, the Comité began restoring the mosque of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh (Fig. 2), a Mamluk Sultan who ruled Egypt between 1412 and 1421. After the most urgent and major restorations were completed, work began on the mosque’s wooden minbar.
The condition of the minbar of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh prior to its restoration was described in an 1890 Comité report as follows:
[L]e minbar en bois est remarquable par ses incrustations d’ivoire ; il sera nettoyé et réparé, car il a été barbouillé de couleurs comme les murs. Il est regrettable que les deux vantaux de la porte d’escalier et les deux portes des flancs du minbar aient disparu, elles auront sans doute été soustraites et vendues ; il en est de même des panneaux intérieurs de la balustrade de l’escalier dont il ne reste que trois. (Bulletin of the Comité 1890, p. 75).
The report does not include any photographs of the minbar. As this monumental mosque had gained the attention of numerous artists and photographers / photographic studios (Pascal Coste, P. Dittrich, Pascal Sébah, Beniamino Facchinelli, Maison Bonfils, G. Legekian &Co, K.A.C. Creswell and others), several photographs of the mosque showing its qibla riwāq and a minbar can be found in different collections around the world. Few photographs show the condition of the minbar prior to restoration and match the Comité’s description of its state prior to intervention (Fig. 3).
Those who are familiar with the mosque of al-Mu’ayyad and who pay attention to the minbar(s) that appears in many of these photographs would recognize that in fact some do not show the original minbar of the mosque (Fig. 4). Where was the original minbar when these photographs were taken? Why was another minbar placed in the mosque? To which mosque did this other minbar belong? Where is it located now?
While archival research reveals detailed information on the restoration of the minbar of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh (Comité archive, folders of monument no. 190), no information could be found regarding the other minbar that is seen in some photographs. The restoration of the minbar of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh required that its elements be disassembled to carry out the necessary interventions as was the case for other minbars. It is possible that the Comité and the Awqāf took the decision to temporarily place a different minbar in the mosque to be used during the sermons, while the original one was being restored. While as noted, no written archival documents were found to confirm this information, the photographs may be the only evidence for this intervention in this mosque. Nevertheless, the research shows that this kind of intervention was carried out in other circumstances. For example, when the minbar of the mosque of al-Dashṭūṭī (1506) was disassembled for restoration in 1913, another minbar was taken from the mosque of Ulmas (1329-1330) (precisely the small minbar from the tomb of the mosque) and was placed temporarily in the mosque of al-Dashṭūṭī to accommodate the needs of the worship (Comité archive, folders of monument no. 12). In contrast, no photographs documenting this move were found.
Considering the great number of views dated from the early 1890s depicting the mosque of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh with its temporary minbar make one wonder whether its move to the mosque had been made for the sake of photography, after the major restorations of the mosque’s qibla riwāq were completed?
After restoration and reassembly, the minbar of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh regained its original location (Fig. 5). Where did the other minbar go? It can be found today in the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo, where it is attributed to the mosque of Tatar al-Ḥijaziyya (1360). One can only speculate why it was not brought back to its original location, possibly because of the building’s poor state of conservation at that time and the existence of another minbar on the site. While again no records were found as to when, how and why it was moved from the mosque of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh to the museum, the research concludes that it must have entered the museum’s collection after the reassembly of al-Mu’yyad Shaykh’s minbar sometime after 1892 and prior to 1895 since it features in the 1895 Catalogue sommaire des monuments exposés dans le Musée national de l’art arabe written by Max Herz, the Comité’s chief architect at the time.
Architectural elements and the so called “movable objects” of historic buildings are pre-dominantly restored in situ. Nevertheless, the process often requires their dismantling/disassembling and then their reconstruction/reassembly on site as was the case with the minbar of al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh. In other circumstances, however, dismantled/disassembled objects are moved from one place to another and experience unexpected journeys such as the minbar of Tatar al-Ḥijaziyya, making it a wandering minbar. During the Comité’s work, not only movable objects travelled, but also some architectural elements, such as the upper pavilion of the minaret of the mosque of Qānībāy al-Sharqasī (1441-2) (A Wandering Pavilion 2023). How many more unexpected journeys of objects and elements that moved in the context of the Comité’s restorations are still to be discovered and explored? This will be for another post.
References
Dina Ishak Bakhoum, “The Restorations of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe in Egypt: “Conservation” or “Reinvention” of monuments? / Les restaurations du Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe en Égypte : “conservation” ou “réinvention” des monuments ?” PhD diss., Leiden University / Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, 2021.
Dina [Ishak] Bakhoum, “A Wandering Pavilion. جوسق متحرك”, in La fabrique du Caire moderne, 27 juin 2023.
“Examen de la Mosquée El Mouyyad (plan Grand bey n° 190),” Bulletin du Comité de conservation des monuments de l’art arabe, 1890, p. 69-77.
Gloria Sergine Ohan Karnouk, “Cairene Bahri Mamluk Minbars: with a Provisional Typology and Catalogue.” M.A. thesis, The American University in Cairo, 1977.
Gloria S. Karnouk, “Form and Ornament of the Cairene Baḥrī Minbar [avec 6 planches],” Annales Islamologiques 17, 1981, p. 113-139.
Miriam Kühn, Mamlukische Minbare. Islamische Predigtkanzeln in Ägypten, Syrien, Libanon, Israel und den Palästinensischen Autonomiegebieten zwischen 1250 und 1517. Mamluk Studies 19, Göttingen: V&R unipress/[Bonn]: Bonn University Press, 2019.



