Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

FATIMID HOUSES
The Houses of al-Fustat
Information on residential architecture of Fatimid times is very limited, but excavation of the suburb of al-Fustat, begun in 1912 and recently resumed, show a house type similar to the Abbasid Kiyts at Ukhaidir and Samarra and probably introduced into Egypt under the Tulunids. The typical T-shaped organization behind a tripartite facade at al- Fustat usually occupies only one end of the squ.ue or rectangular court, but in at least one instance-as at Ukhaidir-two such facades confront each other. Out of a such a complex there seems to have e\ol\ccl the qa’a or reception hall of
Architecture under the Fatimids
781
later times. The dating of these structure is very uncertain, but most originated in the eleventh or early twelfth century. The Qa’at al-Qadir
The earliest qa’a preserved in Cairo is the twelfth- century, Oa’at al-Qadir. Here two very tall barrel-vaulted iwans face each other north and south of a sunken squar, the durka, whose south and east Wcills are articulated by wall arches in the shape of the barrel vaults ovei tall keel-arched niches. Above the wall arches are three windows, once part of a clear story of twelve which may have supported and wooden dome. The lower walls are of ashlar masonry, but the vaults of the iwans with their curious triangular squinches are of brick. The squinches recall the Fatimid restoration (1035) of the Mosque of al-Aqsa at Jerusalem, but the keel- arched niches suggest a date not before the first half of the twelfth century. Later qa’as are roofed in wood throughout. The form which begins here might be an adaptation of the al-Fustat house to more crowded conditions and higher land values requiring the sacrifice of the open courts and triple porticoes of the earlier houses.
Despite its Shi’ite orientation, the Fatimid Caliphate at Cairo seems to have been open to architectural ideas from all over Islam, including those which were Sunni, similarly, the Fatimids’s Sunni successors borrowed freely from their Shi’ite predecessors: the monumental mosque portal, like a Roman triumphal arch, seems to have been one of these. Before Mahdiya it had been used in palaces for example, in the Umayyad bath portal at Khirbar al-Mafjar or the ninth- century palaces at Samarra.The Fatimids gave it the same bold projection for the Mosque of Hakim or used it in a low relief as at alAqmar. Their Ayyubid and Mamluk successors were to do the same. Badr al-Gamali’s masons probably brought the idea of the muqarnas from the East as early as 1085.
In Egypt the motif in both stone and later in brick and wood was to have a long career. It was probably transmitted to Africa in the late eleventh century despite the religious separation that already existed between the two countries. In the twelfth century the articulation of exterior wall surfaces by means of shallow arched niches was developed this was to have a profound effect upon later Egyptian architecture. It was also under the Fatimids that the qa’a evolved as the principal reception hall of both the selamlik and the harem of Cairo’s richest houses.”
Ahmad Hasan. Islamic Architecture. I’ 105

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