The El-Mursi Abul-Abbas Mosque in Alexandria is a well-known mosque devoted to the Alexandrine Sufi saint el-Mursi Abul Abbas. El-Morsy Abul-Abbas Mosque was erected in 1775 by Algerian Sheikh Abu-El-Hassan El-Maghraby over the tomb of Ahmed Abu al-Abbas al-Mursi (Abu’l ‘Abbas), a 13th-century Andalusian scholar who joined and subsequently led the Shadhali brotherhood as a devout Sufi. He was born in the year 1219 in Murcia, Spain.
He arrived in Alexandria to teach Islamic theology at the El Attarin Mosque. In 1287, he died and was buried where the mosque currently stands. The mosque was renovated several times, the most recent by the Egyptian government in 1929, and the building of the mosque was finished at the beginning of 1943.
The current mosque was designed in the Andalusian style and features a distinctive octagonal layout with 22-meter sides. The mosque occupies a total area of 3000 square meters. The mosque’s walls are 23 meters high and made of artificial stone, while the minaret on the southern side stands at 73 meters. Internally, the mosque is shaped like an octagon, with sides of 22 meters.
Although there is a mosaic dada 5.60 meters high, the inside walls are also covered with a fake stone. The ceilings are arabesque-decorated and supported by sixteen solid, or monolithic, Italian granite columns, including their capital and base. They are octagonal in form, with a diameter of.85 meters and a height of 8.60 meters. There are two layers to the domes: an inner layer and an exterior one. The inner ones, which make up the ceiling, are 22 meters tall and 5 meters in diameter. The top domes have a diameter of 7.5 meters and are 11 meters higher than the lower domes. White marble is used to pave the flooring. The doors, minibar, and windows are all constructed of teak that has been connected and elegantly carved.
