Video: Watch restoration work of largest mausoleum dome in Egypt: Al-Imam Al-Shafie inaugurated on April 18

CAIRO – 19 April 2021: Egypt’s Ministry of Tourism & Antiquities released a video of the restoration work of the dome of the shrine of Imam Al-Shafei, which was inaugurated on World Heritage Day on April 18.

The conservation project of the dome started in 2016 and was implemented in cooperation Athar Lina Initiative- Megawra  and funded by the U.S Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation.

Al-Imam Al-Shafi’i is Muhammad Bin Idris Bin El-Abbas bin Othman bin Shafi, known as Imam Al-Shafi’i.

Al-Shafi’i was born in Gaza in the year 150 AH / 767 CE, and grew up in Makkah Al-Mukarramah and studied under the Imam Malik, owner of the Maliki school of Sunni jurisprudence, then boarded with his own doctrine (Al-Shafi’i).

Al-Shafi’i came to Egypt in 198 AH / 813 CE and gave his lessons at the Mosque of Amr ibn al-Aas, and many Egyptian scholars mastered his hands, and he died in the year 204 AH / 819 CE and was buried in the soil of Ibn Abd al-Hakam’s children in al-Qarafa al-Soghra.

During the reign of Salah El-Din El-Ayyubi, he built the soil of Al-Shafi’i in 572 AH / 1176 CE, which was the first building to be built on the tomb of El-Shafi’i.

The current mausoleum is attributed to the complete Ayyubid Sultan Muhammad, who built it on the site of a former Fatimid mausoleum after his mother was buried there in 608 AH | In AH 1211 / AD 1178, the wooden sarcophagus that tops the soil was completed.

It is decorated with geometric fillings engraved in a very elaborate inscription, and Qur’an verses and the translation of the life of al-Shafi’i and the name of its maker (Ubayd al-Najjar) are written on it in Kufic and Ayyubid script.

The current wooden dome is one of the renovations made by Sultan Qaytbay in 885 AH / 1480 CE, as well as the mausoleum. Also Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri, and the governor of Egypt, Ali Bey the Great, also renewed it.

The Ministers of Tourism and Antiquities, Endowments, the Governor of Cairo, the Chairman of the Religious Committee of the Parliament, and the Ambassador of the United States of America in Cairo inaugurated the mausoleum dome of Al-Imam Al-Shafi’i, after completing the conservation and maintenance project on April 18.