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To get a feel for what happened after Babylon and Egypt surrendered to Islam, head to the Mosque of Amr . Though continuously altered, not to mention doubled in size in 827, this boasts direct descent from Egypt's first ever mosque, built in 641. A simple mud-brick, thatch-roofed enclosure without a mihrab, courtyard or minaret, it was large enough to contain the Muslim army at prayer. At its inauguration, Amr Ibn al-As told his 3500 Arab warriors: The Nile floods have risen. The grazing will be good. There is milk for the lambs and kids. Go out with God's blessing and enjoy the land, its milk, its flocks and its herds, and take good care of your neighbours, the Copts, for the Prophet of God himself gave orders for us to do so. Until the fratricidal struggle between Sunni and Shia, this injunction was honoured: aside from paying a poll tax, non-Muslims enjoyed equal rights. It was Ibn Tulun and Al-Hakim who introduced the discrimination (or worse), that later rulers either foreswore on principle or practised for motives of bigotry, fear or greed. But on an everyday level, citizens of each faith amicably coexisted within the city of Fustat-Masr, as they do in modern Cairo. The site of the mosque was indicated by Allah, who sent a dove to nest in Amr's tent while he was away at war; on returning he declared it sacrosanct, waited until the dove's brood was raised, then built a mosque. The existing building follows the classic congregational pattern, arched liwans surrounding a pebbled sahn centred on an ablutions well. Believers pray or snooze on fine carpets in the sanctuary liwan, whose original mihrab is misaligned towards Mecca. When Amr introduced a pulpit, he was rebuked by Khalif Omar for raising himself above his Muslim brethren. The mashrabiya'd mausoleum of his son, Abdullah, marks the site of Amr's house in Fustat. A nearby column bears a gash caused by people licking it until their tongues bled, to obtain miraculous cures. None of the mosque's two hundred columns is identical, incidentally; the pair on the left as you come in are said to part to allow the truly righteous to squeeze through, and another was whipped from Mecca by Omar. From the mosque's well , it is said, a pilgrim retrieved a goblet dropped into the Well of Zemzem in the Holy City. Non-Muslims are charged GBPE6 admission to the mosque (or more if they don't know any better), and its curators are the most baksheesh -hungry in Cairo.
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