The Sultan Hassan mosque (مسجد السلطان حسن) is the older one of the two and is considered one of the largest mosques in the world. As the name implies, it was built by Sultan Hassan who started working on it in 1356 by taking money from the estates of people who died in the 1348 black plague in Cairo, naturally people weren’t happy he did that and he was not very popular. Five years during the construction, one of the minarets collapsed and killed 300 people. Also, three years before it’s completion in 1363, the Sultan himself was murdered and therefore people considered it a bad omen. To counter this, the mosque was then designated as a madrasa and a hospital, and served the people of Cairo in many social and cultural activities.
