Al-Azhar Mosque

Al-Azhar Mosque, known in Egypt simply as al-Azhar, is a mosque in Cairo, Egypt in the historic Islamic core of the city. Commissioned by a 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". Its name is usually thought to derive from az-Zahrāʾ, a title given to Fatimah, the daughter of Muhammad. After its dedication in 972, and with the hiring by mosque authorities of 35 scholars in 989, the mosque slowly developed into what is today. It is the second oldest continuously run university in the world after Al-Qarawiyyin in Idrisid Fes. Al-Azhar University 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 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 after the prior seat of the Fatimid caliphate, al-Mansuriyya in modern Tunisia. The mosque, first used in 972, may have initially been named (, "the mosque of Mansuriyya"), as was common practice at the time. It was al-Mu'izz who renamed the city (, "the Victorious"). The name of the mosque thus became (, "the mosque of Cairo"), the first transcribed in Arabic sources.