_The Introduction of the Muqarnas into Egypt

The decorative device known today as muqarnas, or stalactite vaulting, first appears in Egyptian architecture in the cornices on the minaret of Badr al-Jamali’s mashhad overlooking Cairo, which is dated by inscription to 478 (1085); in a cornice in Cairo’s north wall of approximately the same date; and as a filling for a niche hood and corner chamfer on the facade of the Aqmar mosque dated forty years later (figs. 1-3). 1 In all three cases, the builders were so adept at handling the device that they must already have been familiar with it. Prob-ably contemporary to these three examples are the undated painted-plaster fragments discovered many decades ago in the ruins of the bath of Abu’l-Sucud in Fustat (fig. 4). 2 On stylistic grounds they have been dated to the eleventh century, well before the destruc-tion of Fustat in the middle of the twelfth. A series of small domed mausolea in Cairo use elements similar to those found in the bath and group them together to form” stalactite pendentives”(as KAC Creswell called them), to make the transition from square base to dome (fig. 5). 3 Most of these structures are undated-as are the Abu’l-Sucud fragments-but Creswell convincingly assigned them to the first half of the twelfth century.