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Al-Azhar Mosque ((アラビア語:الجامع الأزهر) , "mosque of the most resplendent") is a mosque in Islamic Cairo in Egypt. Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah of the Fatimid Caliphate commissioned its construction for the newly established capital city in 970. Its name is usually thought to allude to the Islamic prophet Muhammad's daughter Fatimah, a revered figure in Islam who was given the title ''az-Zahrā′'' ("the shining or resplendent one"). It was the first mosque established in Cairo, a city that has since gained the nickname "the City of a Thousand Minarets."〔The Mosque of Amr ibn al-As is the oldest mosque in modern urban Cairo (as well as the oldest mosque in Africa), built in 642 CE. However, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As, as well as several others in modern-day Cairo that are older than al-Azhar, was built in the city of Fustat which the modern-city of Cairo later incorporated.〕 After its dedication in 972, and with the hiring by mosque authorities of 35 scholars in 989, the mosque slowly developed into what is today the second oldest continuously run university in the world after Al Karaouine in Umayyad Fes. Al-Azhar University has long been regarded as the foremost institution in the Islamic world for the study of Sunni theology and ''sharia'', or Islamic law. The university, integrated within the mosque as part of a mosque school since its inception, was nationalized and officially designated an independent university in 1961, following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952. Over the course of its over a millennium-long history, the mosque has been alternately neglected and highly regarded. Because it was founded as a Shiite Ismaili institution, Saladin and the Sunni Ayyubid dynasty that he founded shunned al-Azhar, removing its status as a congregational mosque and denying stipends to students and teachers at its school. These moves were reversed under the Mamluk Sultanate, under whose rule numerous expansions and renovations took place. Later rulers of Egypt showed differing degrees of deference to the mosque and provided widely varying levels of financial assistance, both to the school and to the upkeep of the mosque. Today, al-Azhar remains a deeply influential institution in Egyptian society that is highly revered in the Sunni Muslim world and a symbol of Islamic Egypt. ==Name== The city of Cairo was established by Gawhar al-Ṣiqillī, a Fatimid general of Greek extraction from Sicily. He originally named it ''al-Mansuriyya'' () after the prior seat of the Fatimid caliphate, al-Mansuriya in modern Tunisia. The mosque, first used in 972, may have initially been named ''Jāmi' al-Mansuriyya'' (, "the mosque of Mansuriyya"), as was common practice at the time. It was the Caliph al-Mu’izz li-Dīn Allāh who renamed the city ''al-Qāhira'' (, "Cairo", meaning, "the Victorious"). The name of the mosque thus became ''Jāmi' al-Qāhira'' (, "the mosque of Cairo"), the first transcribed in Arabic sources. The mosque acquired its current name, ''al-Azhar'', sometime between the caliphate of al-Mu’izz and the end of the reign of the second Fatimid caliph in Egypt, al-Aziz Billah.〔 ''Azhar'' is the masculine form for ''zahrā′'', meaning "splendid" or "most resplendent." ''Zahrā′'' is an epithet applied to Muhammad's daughter Fatimah, wife of caliph Alī ibn Abī Ṭālib. She was claimed as the ancestress of al-Mu’izz and the imams of the Fatimid dynasty; one theory is that her epithet is the source for the name ''al-Azhar''. The theory, however, is not confirmed in any Arabic source and its plausibility has been both supported and denied by later Western sources. An alternative theory is that the mosque's name is derived from the names given by the Fatimid caliphs to their palaces. Those near the mosque were collectively named ''al-Qusur al-Zahira'' (, "the Brilliant Palaces") by al-Aziz Billah, and the royal gardens were named after another derivative of the word ''zahra''. The palaces had been completed and named prior to the mosque changing its name from ''Jāmi' al-Qāhira'' to ''al-Azhar''.〔〔 The word ''Jāmi 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Al-Azhar Mosque」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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