Al-Azhar Mosque
The Al-Azhar Mosque in Cairo seems to have had a similar projecting entrance to the Great Mosque of Mahdiya. The original building had an open central courtyard with three arcades. Its layout was similar to the Kairouan and Samarra mosques. These had round arches on pre-Islamic columns with Corinthian capitals. There were three domes (indicative of the location of the prayer hall), two at the corners of the qibla wall and one over the prayer niche, and a small brick minaret over the main entrance. The gallery around the courtyard had series of columns and the prayer hall, which had the domes built over it, had five more rows of five pillars.