Courtyard of Muhammad Ali Mosque. Cairo, Egypt

"The Citadel of the Mountain (Qal'at al-Jabal) in Cairo was funded by Salah al-din al Ayyubi in 1176 on a spur that was artificially cut out of the Muqattam Hills east of Cairo. When Muhammad Ali established himself as the semi-independent ruler of Egypt in the early nineteenth century, he renovated it entirely, altered its interior division, and constructed a few monumental buildings in it. As it stands today, the Citadel is divided into two enclosures: the northern one was a military and administrative center until recently, and the southern held the awesome mosque of Muhammad Ali and a number of palatial structures buit by him as well." [Nasser O. Rabbat., 1991: The citadel of Cairo, 1176-1341: Reconstructing Architecture from Texts. Massachusets Institute of Technology]. "The exterior of the mosque of Muhammad Ali has a Turco-Byzantine character very marked; the pencil minarets can be seen from miles away. The mosque was built during the first quarter of the 19th century and is typical of the period and of the various styles which inspired it. It is an extraordinary Italian-Turkish-Louis XV hotch-potch, built on a Constantinopolitan model." This photograph was taken when Eliot Elisofon was on assignment for Life magazine and traveled to Africa from August 18, 1959 to December 20, 1959.