Hypostyle mosques were also built in other areas of the Abbasid realm. Perhaps the finest example is the mosque in Cairo built by Ahmad ibn Tulun (835-884), which preserves much of its original aspect. The son of a Turkish slave who had been sent from Bukhara as tribute to the Abbasid court at Samarra, Ibn Tulun received military training there. Coming to the notice of the caliph, he was sent to Egypt, becoming governor of Egypt and Syria in 869. The following year Ibn Tulun established a new district in Cairo named Al-Qatai, (the districts; the wards or the plots in an area previously used as a cemetery) not far from Al-Askar. In reality Al-Fustat, Al-Askar, and Al-Qatai all cover an area of about 10 square kilometers, and represent a small part of today's Cairo. In addition, Ibn Tulun built an canal to bring water from the Nile, as well as a palace, a hippodrome, a mosque, offices, and housing for his troops, all probably based on his experiences at Samarra.

The whole is enclosed on three sides in a Ziyada (The outer court of a mosque, common to congregational mosques in the early Islamic period) measuring 162 meters (530 feet) each side. This outer enclosure served to separate the mosque from the bustling city outside and seems once to have contained latrines, ablution areas, and the like. The interior of the mosque comprises a vast court­yard 92 meters (302 feet) each side, surrounded by rectangular brick piers supporting arcades that support a flat wooden roof. The arcades are five bays deep on the Qibla side and two bays deep on each of the other sides. A limestone minaret, dating from the late 13th century, stands on a square base opposite the mihrab in the Ziyada. Although it now shows some similarities to the Samarra type of helicoidal tower, the present minaret seems to have replaced the original minaret, which was also of a similar type, perhaps even more closely modeled on the Samarra example. The present fountain pavilion in the center of the court, also dating to the late 13th century, replaces the original two-storied structure, which was also used for the call to prayer.

The mosque is built of red brick plastered with white stucco. The plain walls were: enlivened wid1 carved plaster bands and friezes which run along the arcades and line the soffits of the arches around the court. They are worked in a great variety of motifs in the first and second Samarra styles. Wooden lintels and door panels were carved in the third Samarra, or beveled, style, and narrow wooden friezes of Quranic inscriptions in Kufic script, reputed to contain the entire text of the Koran, decorated the interior. The new style of decoration seems to have set a precedent throughout Egypt at this time, for similar work is found in the carved wood and plaster decorations of the Christian monastery known as Dair Al-Suryani (914) in the Wadi Natrun.

The Ibn Tulun Mosque is often nowadays seen as an Egyptian imitation of the imperial Abbasid style seen at Samarra. The mosque and its accompanying minaret are normally interpreted by modern scholars as architectural expressions of the power of a central authority over the provinces through the imposition of distinctive, foreign forms.

We are fortunate, however, to have several medieval Egyptian sources that de­scribe the mosque, and none of them supports this hypothesis. For i.e. the geographer Al-Yaqubi (d. 897), who had lived both at Samarra and in Egypt, explained that the mosque's form was the product of a dream of Ibn Tulun's. The historian Al-Qudai (d. 1062) explained the unusual use of brick as a pre­caution against fire or flood, while the bureaucrat Al-Qadi Al-Qalqashandi (c. 1412) said that piers had been used to eliminate columns, which were tainted by having been used before in Christian chapels and churches.

One may therefore conclude, that, if Ibn Tulun had intended that his con­temporaries see his mosque as an imitation of Samarra, he failed, for contemporary viewers did not understand the reference. The relationship between architectural form and political message was, therefore, more complicated than it might appear at first sight. 

Hypostyle is hall or a large space over which the roof is supported by rows of columns like a forest.
 

Al-Qalqashandi Al-Qadi Shihab Ahmed bin Ali bin Ahmed Al-Qalqashandi was one of the authors who was brought up in the Administration Divan, or Council, of Composition. He benefited from his own work and wrote a huge encyclopedia concerning the Divan of Composition that contained a lot of political and administrative documents regarding Egypt.