Takiyyat ibn Tulun, Preservation, and ‘Utility’ in the Case of a Deserted Mosque

Between 1846–80, the Ibn Tulun Mosque (876–79) was recast as a poorhouse, its long-deserted spaces transformed to meet new programmatic requirements. However, the modernizing state that enacted that transformation was also responsible for its undoing, ending traditional practices of reuse that had previously characterized Cairene architecture and instituting a modern philosophy of preservation. Following the poorhouse’s closure, the Comité de la Conservation des Monuments de L’Art Arabe (Committee for the Conservation of the Monuments of Arab Art), in conjunction with the Ministry of Awqaf (Ministry of Endowments), initiated a decades-long restoration of the mosque’s historical form and use. This article takes the plans of the mosque/poorhouse published by K. A. C. Creswell and Yusuf Ahmad, which capture opposite ends of the restoration period, as a lens through which to analyse and outline the Comité de la Conservation des Monuments de L’Art Arabe and the Ministry of Awqaf’s divergent doctrines of preservation and ideas on the (re)use of deserted mosques.