Al-Kamiliyya Madrasa

Al-Kamiliyya Madrasa was founded by the Ayyubid sultan al-Kamil Muhammad in the early thirteenth century and formed part of the scholarly landscape of Bayn al-Qasrayn before the major Mamluk foundations transformed this section of Cairo. The school was especially associated with the study of Hadith and Shafi‘i scholarship and belonged to the broader Ayyubid effort to strengthen Sunni institutions after the end of Fatimid rule. The original madrasa was arranged around a central courtyard with iwans and rooms for students, although only portions of the medieval structure survive today. Later rebuilding altered parts of the building, but the surviving remains preserve an important chapter in the development of formal religious education in Cairo before the monumental Mamluk complexes of Qalawun and Barquq.