Eastern Cemetery (Northern Cemetery) of Cairo

When Faraj moved his father Barquq's body to his khanqah in the Eastern Cemetery (1400-1411), he began the urbanisation of its northern end, and mausolea, madrasas and khanqahs followed there throughout the fifteenth century. ¹ Yeomans thinks the motive was not only Faraj's example but the belief that those buried near the holy shaykhs would share their blessing. ¹

As in the Southern Cemetery, the shaykhs' tombs drew pilgrims, and the annual route to Mecca passed through the area, so mosques, madrasas and khanqahs went up with lodgings for visitors, students and Sufis; the necropolis became more like a residential suburb, and it is still a thriving community where tombs stand beside housing, shops and streets. ^{1 3} Yeomans insists it was never a "city of the dead", as Europeans called it, but a living quarter, as the generous lodgings of the Inal and Qurqumas complexes show. ² Lodgings were also needed for patrons and visitors at the saints' feasts, the mawlids. ⁴

It holds the khanqah of Faraj ibn Barquq, the Barsbay complex with the tomb of Ganibak al-Ashrafi, the Inal and Qurqumas complexes, and the Qaytbay complex. ⁵