FATIMID FORTRESS (QASR FATIMID)

At the main roundabout, turn right on the road of Kufra, turn on the first right before a purple building, then first left. At the bottom of a place in the middle of a residential area. This fortress palace dates from the th century. It included a suite of large apartments in the southwest. At the beginning of the th century, there were still three vaulted halls and two towers. Now only one of the vaulted rooms has not completely collapsed. It was the main bedroom of a public apartment, the most important of the four large apartments in the building. It is also possible to note niches (similar to small circular benches) that support the interior of a previously imposing entrance. Of modest size, however, the building was not a provincial style. It was certainly a palace, with its apartments decorated with ciselé stucco, but it was also a defensive building: at each angle of the rectangular building was a tower, and the outer stone walls were more than one metre thick.

Although modest, these remains are always more pronounced than those of the Fatimide mosque (th century), which are in a cemetery dating back to the Ottoman era. The cemetery (in removal of the road from Jalou and Kufra) covers part of the medieval city. The mosque was built by the caliph Abu al-Qasim al-Qa'im (934-946), the son of Ubaid Allah, founder of the fatimide dynasty. It was the main mosque in the medieval city: it was 20 m out of 17, and it was 31 m high. Its rectangular yard contained an underground tank. The base of the octagonal minaret can still be seen, forming a circle of 3,8 m, and the first nine steps of the external staircase (a fatimide architectural characteristic) which led to the summit of the minaret.

The remains of Ajdabiya, like those of Medinet Sultan, date from the beginning of Fatimide reign in Ifriqiya, which began in 909. The fatimides caliphs then reign on the Ifriqiya from Mahdiya (Tunisia) and have not yet succeeded in conquering Egypt.

But by taking off and developing cities such as Fate or Ajdabiya, in eastern Egypt, they were approaching the latter, which they conquered in 969, before taking Cairo as the capital where they will harvest for two centuries.