All you need to know about Al-Qusair’s 20 shrines in Red Sea governorate

CAIRO – 21 April 2022: The Egyptian city of Al-Qusair in the Red Sea Governorate is one of the oldest cities in the governorate and has witnessed different civilizations, from the Pharaonic to the Islamic and others.

In the below lines, Egypt Today would like to tell you about Al-Qusair city and the 20 shrines it hosts.  

The city of Al-Qusayr is one of the cities that includes shrines and of the good people who are close to God, and most of them are from countries other than Egypt.

A total of 20 shrines were recorded in a detailed map by the German citizen “Carl Benjamin Closinger” who was a doctor in quarantine during the reign of Khedive Ismail in 1875.

Among the shrines recorded are that of Sheikh Abdul Qadir Al-Jilani, Abu Al-Hassan Al-Shazly, and Sheikh Abdul Ghaffar Al-Yemeni and its courtyard includes several graves, in addition to the shrines of Sheikh Abdullah Al-Hindi, Sheikh Ahmed Al-Sisi, Sheikh Selim, Sheikh Al-Fassi, Sheikh Farraj, and the mausoleum of Sheikh Takkuri, who is from the country of Takrur from Timbuktu in Mali, West Africa.

Given the diverse origins of the shrines, they include shrines from Somalia like that of Sheikh Salman Khalaf Sheikh Abdul Ghaffar and Sheikh Al-Zailai bin Ahmed from Berbera in Somalia.

There is also a shrine with Yemeni origins like the shrine of Abdul Ghaffar Al-Yamani, who came and passed away, and was buried there;  a mausoleum was built for him.

Sheikh El Fassi is related to the city of Fez in Morocco, and Sheikh Al Takruri is from Takrur in Mali, Sheikh Selim, Ahmed Al-Sisi, Gadallah, Suleiman, Al-Turbembi, Abu Rialat, Abu Farraj and others.

And those shrines still have religious rituals that are not repeated in any city. The people of the city have been reviving religious occasions since the Islamic era in their own way, which they still celebrate on major religious occasions such as the advent of the month of Ramadan, Eid al-Adha, Eid al-Fitr and the middle of Sha’ban and the Prophet’s birthday.