Al-Rifai Mosque

A royal mausoleum-mosque built to stand beside — and rival — its medieval neighbour.

Commissioned by the mother of Khedive Ismail and completed only in 1912, Al-Rifai was designed to answer the medieval Sultan Hassan mosque across the square in its own Mamluk language. It holds the tombs of Egypt’s modern royal family — and, in a strange turn of history, the last Shah of Iran, who died in exile in Cairo in 1980.