On the eastern side of the Qasaba are the remains of the palace of Amir Bashtak. It is recognizable by the projecting mashrabiya windows in an otherwise plain facade. At ground level there are openings for shops, the rents from which added to the amir's income. They also provide an example of cultural continuity 174 from Roman precedents because their domestic buildings often included shops in the first stories.
The entrance is the second door off the Darb al- Qirmiz, the alley that begins at the north corner of the facade. In small roundels to either side above the entrance are the diamond-shaped napkin blazons of the jamdar, the sultan's master of the robes, an exalted court position that Bashtak held. Inside, pass through a courtyard, up the stairs, and into a great qa'a. This was the main reception hall of the palace.
The mashrabiya screens along the galleries on the north and south sides of the room permitted the unseen ladies of the house to look down upon and enjoy the festivities below. Through the lattice windows at the end of the hall you can look out and see the life in the streets below. High in the walls of the main hall are stucco windows of colored glass on which the blazon of the jamdar is prominent. The coffered wooden ceiling is typical of the early Bahri period. A fountain of inlaid geometric patterns in polychrome marble once stood in the center of the room. (A beautiful fountain from this period is on display in the Museum of Islamic Art.)
By comparing the decoration of this hall with that of the mausoleum of Sultan Qalawun, one notes a great similarity between the decoration in secular and religious architecture. It is easy to imagine how grand this AI-Azhar Square to Bab al-Futuh and Back room must have been when one passed through the latticed screens that originally spanned the arches—the slots in the stone to which the screens were fixed are still visible—and entered the paved inner court, with the fountain playing as musicians and dancing girls, in rich fabrics and glittering jewelry, prepared to entertain the guests.
Bashtak, one of the most powerful amirs of his time, was married to a daughter of al-Nasir Muhammad. His palace, built on a part of the great Eastern Palace of the Fatimids, originally stood five stories high and had running water on all floors. This great hall gives some idea of the scale of the original building, which remains today as a rare example of fourteenth- century Islamic medieval domestic architecture, and a point of origin for subsequent domestic arrangements of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, many examples of which are still standing.
The palace was restored in 1983 by the German Archaeological Institute as one of a cluster of monuments revived in the corner formed by the Darb al-Qirmiz and Sharia al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah. Exhibited in the main qa'a are reproductions by European orientalist painters of Cairo in the nineteenth century, as well as maps showing the city's urban growth.
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