
Discover Zeinab Khaton House
The house is known with its beauty of design and magnificence of construction, made it a destination for filming Motion Pictures and television series.
Who is Muhammad Bey Al-Alfi?
They called him Muhammad. He was a Mamluk; he was brought in 1775 and then sold to Tamerlane, who gifted him to Murad Bey, one of the greatest princes of the Mamluks.
Muhammad Bey Al-Alfi had a lot of money, built palaces and houses, and owned many servants and Mamluks. Muhammad Bey Al-Alfi is one of the Mamluk Princes in Egypt. He was one of the leading Mamluks of Murad Bey, and when the French campaign against Egypt came, he fled with Murad Bey to Upper Egypt.
After Murad Bey allied with the French, according to which Murat Bey became the ruler of Upper Egypt, Al-Alfi retired and continued to fight the French, and when the English came toEgypt to get the French out of it, he allied with them, but after they left Egypt in 1802,
according to the Treaty of emyan, he became in confrontation with the Turks, so he resorted to Upper Egypt. However, he continued to correspond with the English to return to Egypt,and help him usurp its throne, which was ascended by Muhammad Ali Pasha.
Who is Zeinab Khatun
She is one of the maids of Muhammad Bey Al-Alfi. Alfi Bey freed her, and she married a prince named "Sharif Hamza al-kharbutli". And because Zainab married a prince,she became a princess like him, and even a nickname was added to her name, which is Khatun, i.e., the honorable and venerable woman, so her name became Zainab Khatun.
House architecture
As soon as you pass from the entrance to the inside of the house, you will find yourself in large monsters surrounding the four corners of the house, which is what has been called in Islamic architecture as the "Sahn of the house", and the goal of designing the house in this way is to ensure the access of light and air.
The House of Zeinab Khatun is identical in this characteristic with other houses in Fatimid Cairo, such as the House of Al-Harawi, which was built in 1486, the same year in which Zeinb Khatun was built, and also facing him, as well as the House of Al-Suhaimi, which was built in 1648, which indicates that the bowl was an essential feature of house architecture in the Mamluk and Ottoman eras. Without touching on the rest of the architecture of thehouse, but here we are referring to one of the Princess's rooms, the maternity corner on the third floor, where that room is characterized by elaborate stained glass that illuminates the room in different colors when sunlight falls on it. On the left side of the room, there is a door leading to a "sandal", the latter includes a loft bed in which the lady stayed after giving birth.
After the lady gave birth, she would climb into the sandal and leave the room only after forty days had passed. And the house, with its beauty of design and magnificence of construction, made it a destination for filming Motion Pictures and television series.