Mosque Maqam
- Description:
- Mosque Maqam
- Physical Description:
- 3 photographs and digital image
- Date Created:
- June 3, 2008
- Collection:
- Muqashqish Collection
- Series:
- Mosque Interior
- Location:
- Luxor, Egypt
- Time Period:
- Khedivate Egypt (AD 1800-1922)
- Topic:
- Modern structures in historic sites and Islamic architecture
- Cultural Object:
- Mausoleums, Mausoleums, and Mausoleums
- Genre:
- color photographs
- Creative Commons License:
- https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
- Project History:
- A site of significance in the history of Luxor city, the mosque of Abu ‘Ali Isma’il al- Muqashqish, as well as the nearby Luxor Police Station, was documented by the office of Hampikian-Ibrashy under the auspices of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). This was in response to plans to tear down both these structures to build the Avenue of the Sphinxes. Architects Nairy Hampikian & May El-Ibrashi documented the sites extensively through photo, manual, and digital architectural documentation methods. This was made possible with the support of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (formerly the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities).
- Funding Agency:
- The documentation of the Muqashqish Mosque and Luxor Police station was made possible with funding by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Grant No. 263-A-00-04-00018-00 and administered by Egyptian Antiquities Conservation Project (EAC) of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE).
- Abstract:
- The al-Muqashqish shrine was enclosed within a dome. The dome used to have a trilobed arched entrance in the northern wall of the enclosure. This door was blocked in a later building phase, and entrance became through the prayer hall., Al-Muqashqish shrine was believed by the people of Luxor to have healing powers. People visited the shrine for its spiritual attributes, filling containers in the alcove of the dome with oil and then smearing it on themselves in the belief that it will heal them. In true Luxor tradition, visitors also hung model boats from the shrine’s ceiling. Despite the undoubtable religious significance of the al-Muqashqish shrine to both Christians and Muslims, there are no conclusive answers as to who is buried in the shrine., and According to Egyptologist Georges Legrain’s Louqsor sans les pharaons (1914), the shrine of al-Muqashqish houses the body of the Christian martyr Chantome, an ex-soldier turned healer martyred during the tenth Roman persecution of the Christians of the year 284 due to his refusal to renounce the Christian faith. After the Islamic conquest, these sites were appropriated by the Muslims, acquiring Muslim names and stories, in addition to Muslim domes marking them as sites of baraka or blessing. Chantome became known as Abu ‘Ali Ismail al-Muqashqish However, this Christian history is contested by Luxor’s foremost modern chronicler and director of Islamic Antiquities in Luxor, ‘Abd al-Jawwad al-Hajjaji, who claims Chantome was a dermatologist who converted to Islam after the Islamic conquest. He specifies that he healed skin diseases because in Luxor, the term qashqash means that a skin disease healed. Others believe that the person buried there is Shaykh Isma’il b. Ja’far b. ‘Ali al-Idfuwi (d. 711|1311), the paternal uncle of Abu Ja‘far al-Idfuwi the Upper Egyptian historian and chronicler.