Bab Zuwayla

It is one of the gates of the Fatimid Cairo's walls, located on the southern side. It was built by the Fatimid Vizier Badr al-Gamali during the reign of the Fatimid Caliph al-Mustansir in 485 AH/1092 AD, about five years after the construction of the Bab al-Nasr and Bab al-Futuh on the northern side. Together, these gates stand as enduring evidence of the grandeur of military architecture in Egypt during the Fatimid era.

The gate consists of two semi-circular towers and the entrance lies between them. it measures approximately 4.82 meters wide. 300 years later, the Mamluk Sultan al-Mu’ayyad Shaykh used the bases of these two towers to build the two minarets of his mosque adjacent to the gate in 818–824 AH / 1415–1421 AD.

The gate was named Zuwayla after the tribe of Zuwayla, that came from North Africa with Jawhar al-Siqilli and quartered near the gate.  Bab Zuwayla was also known as Bawabat al-Mitwalli (the gate of al-Mitwalli), after the Mitwalli al-Hesba, the official in charge of finances and tax collection based here.

Bab Zuwayla witnessed the end of Mamluk rule when the Ottoman Sultan Selim I, hanged the last Mamluk Sultan Tumanbay, in 923 AH/1517 AD.

In the 1990s, the gate underwent its first restoration by the Committee for the Conservation of Arab Monuments. Later, the Supreme Council of Antiquities, in collaboration with the American Research Center in Egypt, successfully restored the gate as part of a five-year conservation project between 1998 and 2003.