The Mosque, Madrassa of Sultan Hassan is a massive mosque and madrassa located in the Old city of Cairo, it was built during the Mamluk Islamic era in Egypt. Its construction began 757 AH/1356 CE with work ending three years later "without even a single day of idleness"

The massive size of the building made it a spectacle in its day, but even modern visitors are certain to be impressed by its beautiful and imposing architecture.

 
The mosque is noted as the most stylistically coherent of any of Cairo’s monumental mosques—a huge and prototypical example of architectural style of its day.

The interior is beautifully decorated and the effect of its huge central court and imposing verticality is impressive.

 

The mosque was designed in the madrassa style, rather than as a congregational mosque.

For that reason it is laid out in a cruciform pattern with a liwan (teaching areas) on each of the four walls of the inner courtyard for each of the 4 main schools of Sunni Islamic theology—Hanafi, Malaki, Hanbali, and Shafi’i.

The building also included housing for up to 500 students, as well as the teachers and staff required to run a school on this size.

 

In addition to the main courtyard, Sultan Hassan also constructed a mausoleum for himself behind the largest of the liwan, which is situated in the direction of prayer, or qibla.

The mausoleum features an impressive dome and is beautifully decorated.

Placing the mausoleum in the direction of prayer was unusual and controversial configuration since the worshippers were then forced to pray in the direction of the sultan’s body;

however, the mausoleum remains empty because Sultan Hassan was assassinated before it could be complete.

 

Next to Sultan Hassan stands another monumental looking mosque that seems similar in style although it was not completed until 1912.

Al-Rafa’i Mosque was built as an imitation of Mamluk style by the mother of Khedive Ismail as a tomb for the royal family.