al-Qarafa (Southern Cemetery of Cairo)

Al-Qarafa, the Southern Cemetery, is Cairo's great cemetery, then as now a hive of individual and collective pilgrimage and of visits to the graves of relatives. ¹ As Yeomans's map shows, it holds the mausoleum of al-Shafi'i, the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa, the mashhad of Sayyida Ruqayya, the tomb of Shajar al-Durr and the mausoleum of the Abbasid caliphs. ²

Yeomans notes that the prestige of the Fatimid lineage grew in the first half of the twelfth century through popular devotion at the Qarafa tombs of the Prophet's descendants, and reports Jonathan Bloom's view that women, for whom the cemeteries allowed a less formal devotion than the mosque, still make their presence felt there today. ^{3 4}

Salah al-Din made the tomb of al-Shafi'i a Sunni place of pilgrimage with a madrasa beside it, and al-Kamil formalised weekly pilgrimages, often leading the Friday-night procession from the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa to the shrines of the seven shaykhs. ^{5 1} Ibn Jubayr, spending the night of Wednesday 8 April 1183 there, called it one of the wonders of the world for its tombs of prophets, the Prophet's kin, Companions, Followers, scholars and ascetics, all built up with mosques and inhabited shrines lodging strangers, scholars and the poor, subsidised by the sultan. ¹