Tulun Mosque

Tulun Mosque is a solo exhibition of photographs by the Egyptian photographer Ayman Khoury at Beit Tulun, 20 Al Dahdora Street, Al Sayeda Zeinab, Cairo. It runs from 25 October to 1 November 2026 and opens on 25 October at 6pm. The photographs take the Mosque of Ibn Tulun as their subject, and the two that the festival has released are in black and white. The show forms part of the visual arts programme of D-CAF 2026, the 14th Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival, and entry is free.

According to the festival, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun was built in the ninth century on Mount Yashkur and has gathered many legends. D-CAF counts it as the oldest mosque still standing in Egypt. In Tulun Mosque, Khoury works at two scales. Some photographs take in the bulk of the building, while others stay close to its plain surfaces and small details. Other pictures follow the Sufi ritual of dhikr, or remembrance, so that the people taking part and their devotion sit beside the stone.

In the image D-CAF released for the exhibition, a dark opening frames the courtyard, where a lone figure sits on a bench. A wider version of the same frame, shown on the festival's visual arts schedule, takes in the dome over the ablution fountain and the spiral minaret behind. A second picture on the schedule comes in close on a group of veiled women, one with her head tipped back and her eyes shut.

Beit Tulun, a three-storey heritage house facing the mosque, has been converted into a cultural space, and the exhibition is held in partnership with it. D-CAF presents this as the first edition of the exhibition. On 27 October at 7pm, Khoury joins Dr Mona Zakaria and Dr May al-Ibrashy at the house for a 90-minute talk, free with registration. Its title is Architecture of the Soul: Discussions around the Mosque of Ahmad Ibn Tulun. D-CAF 2026 runs from 11 October to 2 November across about ten venues in Cairo and Alexandria.