The inauguration of al-Azhar Mosque

The first Friday prayer was held in al-Azhar Mosque, built by Jawhar al-Siqilli in the Cairo of al-Muʿizz, which would become over the centuries the most famous beacon of learning in the Muslim world and the oldest of its functioning universities.

When Jawhar al-Siqilli laid out Cairo for al-Muʿizz li-Din Allah al-Fatimi in 358 AH, he began building its great mosque. It was completed after about two years, and the first Friday prayer was held in it in Ramadan 361 AH (972 CE).

It was said to be named al-Azhar in honour of Lady Fatima al-Zahraʾ (may Allah be pleased with her). It soon turned from a congregational mosque into a house of teaching in which circles of jurisprudence and language were held, and successive dynasties turned it — under the Ayyubids and Mamluks — into a citadel of the sciences of Ahl al-Sunnah.

For a thousand years al-Azhar has received students of knowledge from the ends of the earth in its arcades, known by the names of their homelands, carrying the banner of the Arabic language and the religious sciences in the face of invasions and colonialism, and it is today the oldest functioning university in the Muslim world.