The Conservation of the Altinbugha al-Maridani Mosque, located in Cairo’s historic Darb al-Ahmar district, is one of the three components of a project awarded a grant by the European Commission, entitled “Creating Access to Cairo’s Islamic Cultural Heritage”. The Project’s aim was to preserve and celebrate Cairo’s rich and tangible Islamic cultural heritage, as well as promote cultural tourism as a major stimulus toward local socio-economic development.

Because of its special significance as a monument and its central location along the principal Medieval spine connecting Islamic Cairo’s Citadel, its famous souqs and Bab al-Zuweyla, preservation of the Maridani Mosque seemed an ideal choice as a means of responding to the project’s development objectives. Its implementation by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture was based on the organisation’s more than twenty years of planning and conservation experience in Cairo’s Al Darb al-Ahmar district. In particular, AKTC’s Egyptian subsidiary, Aga Khan Cultural Services-Egypt (AKSC-E) would bring its long-term association and engagement in the area, best known as a result of the development of Al-Azhar Park and the urban revitalization efforts in the adjoining Darb al-Ahmar neighbourhood, which, together, had generated over the years a solid socio-economic basis for the development of goods and services for the tourism sector.

Aga Khan Trust for Culture. The Conservation of the Altinbugha al-Maridani Mosque, Cairo. Geneva, 2021.

Aga Khan Trust for Culture