This mosque was named after its founder, Sulayman Pasha al-Khadim, governor of Egypt during the reign of Sultan Sulayman the Magnificent. The mosque was constructed in 935 AH/ 1528 AD on the ruins of a Fatimid mosque. Sulayman Pasha’s mosque was the first Ottoman-style mosque built in Egypt, as it is surrounded by a wall and is led up to by means of a staircase from two sides. Its minaret ends with a pointed conical top in the shape of a pencil, while the entrance leads to an open courtyard, preceded by a prayer house.
The prayer house consists of a square area covered with a central dome, surrounded by three iwans covered with half-dome stone. The mosque’s marble pulpit is distinguished by exquisite floral and geometric decorations and a bench of the muezzin” dikkat al-mubaligh”. As for the courtyard, on the northwest side of the prayer house, it consists of an open court surrounded by four canopies covered with shallow domes, including a sundial. In the northwestern portico, there is the dome of a mausoleum in which "Abu Mansur Qasta", the founder of the old Fatimid mosque, in addition to several marble structures and tombstones of mausoleums for notable figures from the Ottoman era.
Additions continued to the mosque during the era of Muhammad Ali Pasha, where he added the shed that precedes the western entrance. Furthermore, King Farouk I (1939-1952 AD) made renovations inside the mosque, and the Committee for the Preservation of Arab Antiquities restored the mosque in 1891 AD without prejudice to its original features.
