Exterior of white mosques in the centre of Alex

The most remarkable place in the old city centre of Alexandria is a group of beautiful mosques in the Anfushi area. This neighborhood is a nowadays a very poor area, but still conserves some of the taste of its great past. In this alleyway i found food stalls, parked carretas and children playing football with a can, the Sidi Yakout El-Arsh mosque stands bright white in the background:

In this picture, the contrast is of other nature. I heard once that the aspirations and power of a civilization can be analyzed by finding the tallest buildings in a city...nowadays are not cathedrals, lighthouses or minarets anymore...

The domes in the Yakout mosque are extremely pretty with their intricate geometrical patterns, the openings that accentuate the verticallity and the typical little spheres topping them:

In here the mosque from the side and the classic stall selling tea and coffee:

In the same square the Sharaf al-Din al-Busiri Mosque and mausoleum can be found. It is a tiny but charming little mosque, were one of the great sufi characters is buried. The long complete name of this man was: Sharafud´-dini Muhammad bin Sa´idi bin Hammadi bin Muhsini bin Sanhaji as-Sanhaji al-Busiri...Al-Busiri A.D.) was an Egyptian of Berber Maghrebi (Moroccan) ascendants from a poor family, who excelled as calligrapher, traditionalist and sufi poet. An interesting fact is that he memorised the whole Holy Qur2an at the age of 13 (!!!). This was the first mosque in Alexandria that i entered; the tomb is said to have el-Barakah (blessing) and that motivates mothers with their little children to visit the highly decorated burial place. Architecturally, the most remarkable elements of this building are the lovely interior marble patio and the silver domes:

The mosque of Abu Abbas al-Mursi occupies the central place in the square. This mosque constructed in 1775 by Algerians, built over the tomb of the Andalusian saint and mystic, Sheikh Shehab El Din Abu El Abbas Ahmed Ibn Umar Ibn Mohamed Al Ansary El Mursi, who joined and then lead the Shadhali Tariqa (Tariqa is a brotherhood, or of school of thought). Al-Mursi ( A.D.) was born in Murcia (as his name indicates) and lived in Seville with his wealthy family working in the trading business. With 23 years he moved to Tunisia where he met El Sheikh Abu El Hassan El Shazly and accompanied him to Alexandria. Here, he stayed as a Muslim teacher for 43 years until his death and was widely regarded for his commitment to help the less favoured in society. The building itself has a very long history, beginning just with the tomb, it was successively enlarged and repaired throughout the centuries until the completion of the final building in the aforementioned date by Sheikh Abu el Hassan El Maghreby. The last reconstruction was done in 1943 by King Farouk, when the mosque was decorated in the Ayyubid style, the popular style at the time of the emigration of Al-Mursi. The shining has been (and still is) visited by many pilgrims from North Africa in their way to Mecca for centuries.

In here the side view of the Al-Mursi mosque from the underground commercial area in the centre of the square:

A close up from the back entrance:


In here the front entrance, where it can be read: "Do not forget Allah", and locals sell some of the typical made in china stuff:


A detail of the pattern of one of the windows:


In here the balcona with Mashrabiya on the side:


And how not? a cat guards the entrance to the toilet of the Mosque :)

The day i was treated like a muslim terrorist

Masr, historically, has certain similarities with Al-Andalus. As a start is the only other exit of the Mediterranean (literally the Middle of the Earth) to the ocean which makes it a very strategical point to commerce. Since both are relatively flat lands with abundance of water they are very rich agriculturally. Due to such circumstances many different powerful civilizations have controlled those areas, Greeks, Romans, Phoenicians, Arabs, Ottomans, etc...For the particular case of the Roman Empire, Al-Andalus was the granary of the West and Egypt the granary of the East. Such civilizations not only benefited from our lands, but they left a tremendous technological inheritance that throughout the centuries mixed and evolved. As a result, in both places, we became a center of interest, not only for economical reasons, but for cultural reasons too. Due to that, we attracted intellectuals from different religions and places in the world that enriched furthermore our lands. In Al-Andalus, as well as in the particular example of Alexandria, we had periods when Muslims, Christians and Jewish lived in in relative peace. Reminders of such mixes can be found in both lands, from Seville (with the second biggest cathedral of Catholicism after St. Peter in Rome), where the "christian" temple is half Islamic (conserving the Minaret and the patio of ablutions of the old mosque) and half gothic...

...to Alexandria, where mosques and churches stand side by side:


I have been having very long conversations about religion and faith with some locals, and i have realised how long it has been since i went to church or even considered my own faith. I stopped making questions because i could find no complete answer, i could not find it in the Bible, Torah, Coran, Bhagavad Ghita, Tao Te Ching, Popol Vuh or any others i read. So a couple of days ago, i was coming back from my visit to the Carita's building outside Alex, when i found myself walking between that mosque and that (Coptic) church in the picture. I stopped and observed all the people going in to pray and i felt like going inside the church to explore that field that i abandoned so long ago. i know most of you are surprised with this...but surely not as much as i did (actually when i told this story to Bahz he asked me if i went in there for research :D). I walked to the church, and in the door two security guards stopped me: They asked me for my passport, meanwhile one inspected it, the other was saying in Arabic that i was Muslim pointing to the Mosque opposite (my 2 month long beard was not helping). The next idiotic question from the man looking at my passport was "where are you from?"...ehhh i thought it was obvious from my passport, but i answered. Then he took my right hand and checked my wrist trying to find the tattooed cross that most Coptic people have, and obviously couldn't find it. Then he asked me why in my passport doesn't state that i am Christian, i answered because almost every Spanish is Christian (at least on paper) as freedom of religion was abolished five centuries ago. Both were quite aggressive, and that was not putting me in a very good mood. Then the guy turned his attention to my bag, i opened it and begin taking things out: my notebooks, my books, pens, my sweater, my calculator...basically the usual stuff. He searched every pocket in my bag until he found something and gave me an accusative look and with a menacing voice he inquired: "what is this??" You could have guessed it was a gun from his face, but it was my USB pen. I thought that was the end of it, and that they would let me pass to the church. I was wrong again, the guy was taking me to the security office to do a body search!!! At that point i refused to go further with that non sense, i sent him to fry asparragous (lo mande a freir esparragos) in my best Spanish, i turned around and left the building. I felt what many Muslims feel everyday in many places around the world, pure religious discrimination...I do not think that i am welcomed to the house of God anymore, it was a sign: i will stay away from it...

Curiosity of the day: Egyptians just have one sound for "p" and "b", and many of them interchange it very happily. This difficults communication even more, let me give you some examples: pan and ban sound the same, palette-ballet, bale-pale, bay-pay and the always funny brick and pitch :P

Some historical facts about Islamic Sci and Tech.

I have just finished reading a little lovely book called "Introduction to Islam" by Ziauddin Sardar and Z. Abbas Malik. Do not panic, oh Westerner readers!, the book does not intend to be the first step towards the conversion of the infidel. Z.Sardar is a writer, critic and broadcaster living in London, and he is the author of a great deal of books in Science and Technology in Islam and other related subjects ( http://www.counterpoint-online.org/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=533 )

Is really impressive the clarity of the explanations and level of insight achieved in this "for-children" looking like book. It guides the reader through a fascinating travel from the times of Muhammad to present day, showing a great deal of balanced criticism to certain aspects western and islamic worlds alike. This is a must read for any person that wants to understand a bit better the world we are living in, and particularly it is a very objective presentation of Islam, unlike many of the deformed visions presented daily to us in mass media. Much of the material contained in the book i knew it already, specially related with science and technology in the knowledge-based Muslim societies of early days of Islam. Others i simply did not know them. Nevertheless the author does a very good compilation of a few things that the West learned from the Muslim world. Note i have taken the liberty of rearranging the items into a more logical order, rephrasing some and adding others:

- How to argue: philosophical and intellectual methods
- Classic Greek philosophy: Plato, Aristotle and others
- Arabic numerals and the zero (from india)
- Algebra, trigonometry and spherical geometry (taken from the greeks and greatly developed in Islamic countries)
- The scientific method (mathematical abstractions and empirical method)
- Basic set of astronomical facts and laws
- Laboratory tools: test tubes, flasks, etc...
- Hospitals, surgery tools and the basic canons of medicine (Avicena or Ibn Sina)
- Bibliographics tools: Catalogues, bibliographies, dictionaries, thesauri and encyclopedias
- Organization and administration of libraries
- University system: From the two oldest universities in the world University of Al Karaouine (Fez, Morocco) and Al-Azhar University (Cairo, Egypt) established as early as the IX century. Note that in the antiquity there was other learning centres (Plato´s Academy in Athina, Greece) but they are not considered Universities for their different structure.
- Paper Manufacture (paper was invented by TS´ai Lun in 105 A.D, and "stolen" by the Arabs in 751 A.D)
- Publishing companies and bookshops
- Hydrology, advanced methods of irrigation and other agricultural technology
- Navigation, compass and astrolabe (the first analogue computer)
- Cartography, the first world map and travel books

Well, what to say? Just to point out that what we called Renaissance and the scientific revolution could have (Obviously!) never happened without all this advances introduced to us by Muslim people. Actually many of the works that we in the west believe "original" from our scientists were actually inspired or directed copied or plagiarised from some of the works in the aforementioned fields of study. The list is truly impressive and i recommend some further research for the curious mind.

The author mention: "some things that the west failed to learn from muslims (and which muslims themselves have forgotten)":

- Knowledge and values can not be separated
- The importance of holistic thought and action
- Environmental husbandry: The islam establishes protected zones, Haram and Hima, were developments were forbidden for the conservation of the environment)
- Animal rights...yes the first animal right statement was formulated by Ibn abd as-Salam in the XIII century)
- Multiculturalism: Al-Andalus, the place where i come from, was the first and the only truly multireligious and multicultural society in history; Muslim Bosnia and Malasia are contemporary examples.

And these are just the most prominent examples, there are many others...Islam is not a culture of violence, barbarism and ignorance, actually history tell us just the opposite. Nevertheless theres violence, barbarism and ignorance in all places and times regardless of the religion.

As a farewell note a quotation from Muhammad: "Go in quest of knowledge even to China"