Mamluk Cairo, City of a Thousand Minarets

Cairo becomes the metropolis of the Muslim world, its skyline crowded with domes, madrasas and minarets that still stand.

After Baghdad’s fall, scholars, craftsmen and trade converged on Cairo. The Mamluk sultans endowed mosques, hospitals and schools of carved stone whose domes are counted among the finest ever built. Ibn Battuta called the city the mother of the world, and its historic core remains a treasury of Islamic architecture.