Spotlight Lecture: Egypt's Forgotten Wonder: The lost city of Ibn Tulun

This Tuesday Spotlight lecture within our wider theme of 'Wonders of Egypt' explores the most well-known sites and discoveries from Egypt by highlighting the aspects that are less known or often overlooked.
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Of all the wonders of Egypt, few could have been grander than the city of Al-Qata'i founded by Ibn Tulun in 870 CE. Established in the model of the great Abbasid city of Samarra in Iraq, the new Amir of Egypt sought to emulate his caliphs while also setting Egypt up as the capital of his new dynasty - the Tulunids. At the centre of this new metropolis was the ruler's famous mosque, the only part of Al-Qata'i still standing today (or so people will tell you). This presentation will briefly introduce this short-lived dynasty and the capital they founded - a precursor to the modern metropolis of Cairo.
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Carl Graves is Director of the Egypt Exploration Society. He completed his PhD at the University of Birmingham (UK), and his research now focuses on ancient Egyptian settlement and landscape archaeology and the development of British Egyptology during the late eighteenth century.