The Mosque of Hassan Basha Taher

This ornate mosque complex, built in 1809, houses the tomb of an Albanian mercenary who rose to become Egypt’s ruler. And no, it is not Mohammed Ali Basha.

This is Taher Basha. His rise was intertwined with Mohammed Ali’s, but unlike his comrade who established a dynasty, Taher Basha’s time in power was excruciatingly brief, a mere three weeks or so.

Back in Albania, Taher Basha was a brigand leader who became powerful enough that the Ottoman military, finding itself unable to crush him, chose to co-opt him instead. In 1801, the Ottomans hired him to go to Egypt as the commander of a force of Albanian fighters to help drive out the French occupiers. Among his officers in the force was Mohammed Ali. (1)

Once the French withdrew from Egypt following a series of defeats to British-Ottoman forces, the Ottomans returned to power in Cairo with a triumphant procession that laced through the city from Bab al-Nasr to the Citadel. The entire population lined the streets and crowded on rooftops to catch sight of the top Ottoman official, resplendent in his fur robe and a cap crowned with tinsel and feathers, with an aide behind him flinging silver dirhams out into the crowds. Marching along with him, as military bands beat drums and blared trumpets and artillery blasted in celebration, were the rows of Ottoman Janissary troops, Mamluk soldiers and the Albanian fighters with Taher Basha at their head.

Egypt was ostensibly back as a domain of the Ottoman Sultan in Istanbul. But it was torn among three armed powerhouses: the Ottoman governor backed by the Janissaries, the Albanians led by Taher Basha and Mohammed Ali, and the Mamluk beys who had governed Egypt before the French invasion.

Our Taher Basha, the former brigand, settled into his new life in Egypt.

He spoke little Turkish or Arabic and so mainly got by in Albanian, according to the main historian of the time, al-Jabarti. He spent much of time near with the Sufis as the Khanqah of Sheikhou on Saliba Street. He had a passion for Sufism and had his own cell in the khanqah, where at night he would go up on the roof to join Zikr ceremonies with his favorite sheikh. He hosted gatherings of darwishes and majadheeb, holy madmen known for their ascetism and their extravagant mystical states, to whom he became entirely devoted. This made him vulnerable to scam artists seeking to sponge off him, al-Jabarti notes — lowlifes who dressed up in tattered clothes and tall conical hats draped in bells and tinsel and waved canes and rattles and beat drums, screaming and babbling to convince Taher they were in ecstatic communion with God.

The Ottoman governor, meanwhile, struggled to establish his authority. Khosrou Mehmed Basha was a lousy administrator and was notoriously bloodthirsty. To make matters worse, the Mamluk Beys controlled much of Upper Egypt and were taking the area’s tax revenues for themselves, starving Khosrou Basha’s budget and leaving him unable to pay his military.

To keep paying his loyal Janissary troops, Khosrou ordered the Albanian forces disbanded in April 1803. This triggered a riot by the Albanians. As the streets of Cairo raged with battles between the Albanians and Janissaries, Taher Basha slipped into the Citadel and, from there, bombarded Khosrou’s mansion in Azbakiyya with artillery. Khosrou fled Cairo, and the Albanians looted his abandoned mansion and burned it down to its foundations. Taher paraded through the city streets with his carnival of darwishes and majadheeb and played the peacemaker, urging the public to open their shops. “We are all together! You are our people!” he proclaimed.

The top clerics and qadis declared Taher Basha as “qa’im-qam,” or top administrator of Egypt, pending Istanbul’s formal appointment of him as governor.

It was not to be, however.

Taher Basha immediately ran into the same financial troubles and adopted the mirror-image policy of the ousted governor. He made sure his Albanians got their salaries and refused to pay the Janissaries. In May 1803, two Janissary officers visited him in his mansion to demand their salaries. When he refused, they cut off his head and threw his body and head out the window into the courtyard outside. Hundreds of Janissaries stormed in, set fire to his mansion and rampaged through the streets, rioting and looting.

Taher Basha had ruled for all of 26 days.

To hear al-Jabarti tell it, this entire chain of events was engineered by Mohammed Ali. He manipulated everything from behind the scenes, playing each side against the other to, one by one, clear away all obstacles between him and power. First, he incited the Albanian troops against Khosrou Basha, then incited the Janissaries against Taher Basha. After Taher’s beheading, Mohammed Ali stepped in to lead the Albanians and struck an alliance with the other main force in the country, the Mamluk Beys. Together, they defeated the fugitive Khosrou and managed to bring down the next few governors sent by Istanbul.

When he was finally recognized by Istanbul as Egypt’s governor, Mohammed Ali turned on the Mamluks and massacred them, cementing his unquestioned rule. He went on to shed Ottoman control and ruled for 40 years, modernizing Egypt and establishing a royal family that would reign until 1953.

But let’s go back to Taher Basha’s headless body.

It lay in his courtyard for more than a day as his mansion burned, his supporters unable to reach it amid the chaos. Eventually, they retrieved it and buried in the tomb of a holy man located here, at the site of the present-day mosque. They later intercepted some Janissaries who were carrying Taher’s head, killed them and reunited the head with the body here in the tomb.

Six years later, in 1809, Taher’s brothers, Hassan Basha Taher and Abdeen Bey Taher, who were military commanders under Mohammed Ali, built this mosque complex around the tomb.

The tomb of Taher Basha, inside the mosque

Known as the Hassan Basha Taher Mosque, it’s built in a Mamluk style, juiced up by Ottoman ornateness. Lovely bits of blue tiles are still preserved on the façade. Inside, a number of buildings are cramped together within the compound, including the domed tomb of Taher Basha at the foot of the steps leading up to the main mosque entrance. The place has a festive, bustling feel, its multiple domes and half-domes rolling like a carnival ride behind flame trees and fluttering streamers, while women shop at the wooden carts of onions and potatoes and peppers on the corner outside.