The Mosque of Sulayman Agha al-Silahdar, built in 1839, is a Cairene neighborhood mosque with the decorative features of the Muhammad 'Ali style. The spatial configuration combines both Ottoman and local features, with a courtyard surrounded by arcades covered by shallow domes, and a sanctuary with four marble columns that support a central lantern.
The mosque's design accommodates both the interior qibla orientation and the existing context of the street by progressively increasing the thickness of the wall of the street façade, an adjustment technique first employed in the Mosque of al-Aqmar (1125).
The sabil, which is next to the kuttab instead of underneath it, flaunts a façade decorated in an Ottoman baroque fashion and strongly recalls that of the sabil-kuttab built by Isma'il Pasha (1828) facing the Madrasa of al-Nasir Muhammad at Bayn al-Qasrayn.
Sources:
'Abd al-Wahhab, Hasan. "Al-'Imara fi 'Asr Muhammad 'Ali Basha." Majallat al-'Imara 3-4 (1941): 57-70.
Behrens-Abouseif, Doris. Islamic Architecture in Cairo. Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1989.
Jarrar, Sabri, András Riedlmayer, and Jeffrey B. Spurr. Resources for the Study of Islamic Architecture. Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture, 1994.
