The mausoleum of Al Imam Al Shafei was inaugurated on Sunday, wrapping up preservation and restoration work that started in 2016, the Tourism and Antiquities Ministry said in a statement. Al Shafei, born in Gaza in 767 AH, is the founder of the Shafi'i Sunni Islamic school of jurisprudence. He came to Egypt in 813 AH to teach at Amr Ibn Al Aas Mosque before he died in 819 AH. After his death, his tomb became a popular site where people believed prayers would be more likely to be answered. The former mausoleum design is attributed to the Ayyubid Sultan al-Kamil, but Athar Lina — which carried out the conservation project — discovered remains of an earlier Fatimid shrine and the initiative saw the organization piece together information to create a more complete narrative of the site. The conservation project was funded by the US Ambassadors Fund for Cultural Preservation and is part of a two-phase US government-backed project worth USD 1.3 mn.

MORE READING- University of Texas at Austin professor Stephanie Mulder has a Twitter thread in which she takes a fantastic deep dive — and credits the excellent work of the team led by May al-Ibrashy. Photo by Ahmed Mansour.