2025 - Recording Inscriptions in the Shrine of Ikhwat Yusuf, Cairo, by Nicholas Warner
The Shrine of Ikhwat Yusuf is a late-Fatimid (circa AD 1125-1150) complex located to the east of the Southern Cemetery of Cairo. The American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE) fully conserved the building between 2022 and 2024. Cleaning of the plastered walls of its interior has revealed a unique corpus of more than one hundred Arabic inscriptions in diverse styles left by pilgrims during their visits to the shrine over centuries. These inscriptions, already photographed in detail, will now be subject to digital epigraphy, collation, interpretation, and translation to make them accessible to a wider audience and to reveal them in their social context.
The inscriptions in the shrine are either painted or scratched on multiple plaster layers and are executed in diverse styles at different scales. Some are impressive demonstrations of the calligrapher’s art, while others bear witness to the presence of professional scribes who would have offered their services to the visitors. The documentation, transcription, and publication of this rare corpus will provide valuable cultural material for study by scholars and will inform our understanding of social practices in the mediaeval period.
The project will also include a focussed training in digital epigraphy, a little understood procedure on Islamic sites though common in Pharaonic contexts, for up to six members of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities selected in consultation with the Islamic and Coptic Department of the Supreme Council of Antiquities and their central training unit.
Nicholas Warner is Director for Cultural Heritage Projects at ARCE. He is an architect and architectural historian trained at Cambridge University, UK, and the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University.
