“It was 1,085 years ago that the first prayers were held at the ancient Mosque of Al-Azhar in Cairo, and ever since it has been on a path of daawa [preaching], civilisation, learning, justice, identity, and patriotism — all of which have flourished and borne fruit for pious Muslims across the world.”
This was the statement posted by the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmed Al-Tayeb on his Facebook page after Iftar on 7 March this year. The statement was to commemorate the foundation of Cairo’s Al-Azhar Mosque, established by the Fatimid Dynasty during their rule of Egypt starting in the 10th century CE.
Today, Al-Azhar Mosque is one of the city’s ultimate Ramadan venues. As sunset approaches, it opens to Muslim students who have come to study at Al-Azhar University from all over the world for a shared Iftar meal served by Al-Azhar charities in a tradition that has been going on for about four years.
“The idea is to have these students who come from far away have a free Iftar meal together without having to worry about the preparation and also to be able to enjoy the spirituality of the month and the ancient mosque itself,” said Ahmed Sawi, spokesman for the grand imam.
He added that over 3,000 students have been taking part in this Iftar every day of Ramadan over the past few years, in keeping with the core Islamic precept of sharing and in line with the commitment of Al-Azhar to take care of students who are not resident in the dorms of Al-Azhar University and who live on their own.
After the Maghreb prayers and Iftar, the Mosque readies itself for the subsequent eisha (evening) and taraweeh (post-evening) prayers. Along with Al-Hussein Mosque opposite, built over a century after Al-Azhar, the entire vicinity becomes a prime Ramadan spot in Cairo.
The mosques are among the few surviving architectural relics of the Fatimids, whose rule, according to historians, added texture to festivities in Ramadan. “The street that one crosses today from Al-Azhar Mosque to Al-Hussein Mosque is built over what was once known as Dar Al-Fitra [the House of Iftar] that was part of the Fatimid complex of palaces that was later destroyed,” said Abdel-Azim Fahmi, a historian and founder of Sirat Al-Qahera (Cairo Biography), an initiative to document the history of the city.
The Dar Al-Fitra, Fahmi explained, was the place where the caliph would come to share Iftar with his aides, ministers, and other high-ranking associates over lavish meals in Ramadan that would allow visitors to eat as much as they wanted and to take food with them when they exited.
These elaborate Iftar meals, Fahmi said, were not just about showing prosperity, however, as “prosperity had been established after years of hardship and famine.” They were also about the caliph’s commitment to fully and properly observe the holy fasting month. The meals, which would continue from evening prayers to the serving of Sohour (pre-dawn meals), were part of larger routine that would also include hours of Quranic recitation.
The most significant day used to be the 27th day of Ramadan, or Youm Al-Khatmah, the day when the entire recitation of Quran was completed, in association with the assumption that it was also the Lailat Al-Qadr, the holiest evening for Muslims when the Quran was first revealed to Prophet Mohamed, Fahmi said.
This practice, he added, was not exactly observed during the rule of the subsequent Ayoubid Dynasty, because they were opposed to the practices of the Fatimids due to the differences between the Sunnis and Shias — the Fatimids were the only Shia Dynasty ever to rule in Egypt. The most famous Ayoubid ruler Salaheddin (Saladin) actually closed down Al-Azhar Mosque for a time. Moreover, the wars that the Ayoubids fought with the European Crusaders at the time compromised practices associated with abundance.
However, according to Fahmi, the Mamelukes, who took over Egypt after the Ayoubids, re-introduced this tradition and made it just as lavish. They also added to the Quranic recitations various recitations of the sayings of the Prophet Mohamed and other forms of demonstration of piety, he said.
Again, he added, the idea was to underline the profile of the ruler as the main figure for the entire community. Well-off people in Cairo who used to live in bigger houses would also offer Ramadan Iftars “as a sign of socio-economic prestige” and not just generosity or charity.
RESPONSIBILITY: According to Al-Mouzafar Kotoz Tageddin, a food historian, “the idea of walaem [banquets] underlines the responsibilities of the ruler towards the ruled.”
“It is important to think of the context — talking about these Mediaeval rulers is talking about rulers who were perceived, or at least wanted to be perceived, as ultimate providers.” The walaem were part of the dynamic of the ruler-subject relationship “throughout the year but especially during Ramadan,” he said.
They were also not just religious occasions but also personal ones, especially during the rule of the Mamelukes. “It was not just the Sultans, but also other members of the political elite, who would spread out the banquets in the central squares of the city,” he added.
“In essence, the walaem served as a reminder for those who joined them that they were part of a bigger entity and that this entity had a head, namely the Sultan or whoever was offering the banquet. This was because in the Middle Ages the ruler was an institution and not just the person at the top of the hierarchy. As a result, if it was not the Sultan himself offering the banquet, it could be the emir of Upper Egypt or one of the ministers,” Tageddin explained.
“It is also important to remember that given the lack of cooking facilities in the houses of the vast majority of the population at that time, it was not unusual for people to eat outside their houses, in this case at the expense of a political figure, a leading merchant, or someone else with socio-economic status.”
Like other food historians, Tageddin said there is no convincing evidence regarding the order of dishes on Fatimid Iftar tables due to the lack of historical documentation. However, he added that “it is known that for the most part the Mamelukes, in keeping with their traditions as mostly Circassians, would first serve fruit that helped with rehydration and prevented gluttonous eating and then move on to the main dishes.”
Historian Khaled Azzab said that the Arab Manuscripts Centre, a cultural agency of the Arab League, is currently working on a catalogue of the history of Arab cuisine. The project, he said, will be launched next month and aims to investigate all available documents in order to put together as complete a picture as possible about what people, both rulers and subjects, used to eat in the Middle Ages across the Arab world and under the many different dynasties.
“Some dynasties are better represented than other in the documents, but we are trying to fill in the gaps as much as possible,” he said.
According to Azzab, the idea of offering food in the history of Muslim rule is also layered. “In essence it is, or rather should be, about charity and responsibility,” he said. He added that this was the way things started in the city of Al-Madina Al-Monnawara during the Hijra (the Prophet Mohamed’s exodus from Mecca to Medina) when the first offering of food was made to the followers of the prophet who were coming to Medina with hardly any resources.
However, Azzab noted that with the passing of the years and the evolution of politics, Islamic practices took on different meanings. “We are sure, for example, that in the case of Egypt this exercise was always there even prior to its institutionalisation during the Fatimid rule in Egypt,” he said.
“It is clearly mentioned in the history of the Abbasid ruler of Egypt Ahmed Ibn Tulun in the ninth century that he used to offer some sort of banquets during Ramadan and on other occasions,” he added.
There is also evidence that the Abbasid Dynasty, which ruled different parts of the Arab and Muslim world between the eighth and the 13th centuries, followed the political-social practice whereby the ruler would organise a banquet for selected members of his entourage “on several occasions, including Ramadan”.
This was not about charity but about politics, given the evolution of Muslim rule at the time.
“One could argue the same thing about the Fatimids in Egypt,” Azzab said. He argued that in their pursuit of support, the Fatimids gave an official imprint to the otherwise popular exercise of offering food on certain occasions including Ramadan. This, he said, was a point at which charity and politics met.
Throughout the history of Muslim dynasties, Azzab argued, food and politics came together in many ways. “Sometimes this association was manifested in the form of large banquets, but at other times it could also lead to anger when food was short for one reason or another,” he said.
“It was during the rule of the Mamelukes that the population surrounded the Citadel in Cairo, the seat of the Sultan, to demonstrate against a bread shortage, for example, and the Sultan had to order the distribution of the wheat that was stocked there in order to pacify the masses,” Azzab said.
Moreover, he said that the concept of welfare, a core Islamic precept, also evolved over time. “Originally, giving was about being pious, but with the passing of time it was in some cases about the wish of the affluent to pacify the possible anger of the poor and deprived,” Azzab said.
The tradition of offering banquets started to decline with the modernisation of Egypt in the 19th century, Fahmi said. However, Ramadan remained an exception when the khedives would make a gesture of generosity to the public.
With the establishment of the republic in the 1952 Revolution, “the concept of banquets was simply dropped given that it was also the time of socialism,” Azzab said. It was only in the 1990s that the concept was re-introduced in its Mawaeid Al-Rahman (Ramadan banquets) version in which the rich and charitable would put up pavilions to offer Iftar during Ramadan.
In the rural context the tradition of offering food during Ramadan had continued, but it significantly receded in the urban context and only re-emerged with the economic austerity measures that the state started to adopt in parallel with its neo-liberal choices. Today, Azzab noted, it is mostly civil society organisations that cater for this exercise using the donations of the rich and the not-so-rich to do so.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 13 March, 2025 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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