1 · POSITION
The wikala is the merchant caravanserai of Mamluk and Ottoman Cairo, and the Wikala of al-Ghuri, built in 1504–05 by the sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri as part of a religious and civic complex, is the one that survives intact. The register enters it because its plan states the type exactly: goods and animals below, merchants above, and the city’s poor housed over both. [1, 2]
2 · FIVE STOREYS ROUND A COURT
The building rises five storeys round a large rectangular courtyard. Animals and goods were kept on the ground floor; travelling merchants lodged on the second; the three floors above were let as low-rent apartments. A single building was warehouse, hotel and tenement at once. The antiquities ministry describes storage alcoves on the ground and first floors, used as warehouses by the resident merchants, and modular lodging rooms on the floors above; a wooden roof across the street joins the wikala to the sultan’s mosque, madrasa and mausoleum and shelters a textile market beneath it. [1, 2]
3 · THE WIKALA TODAY
Restored most recently in 2004, it now holds artisans’ workshops and studios, local offices and cultural venues, and its courtyard is the stage for whirling Sufi performances given chiefly for visitors. The house that received merchants now receives an audience. [1, 2]
4 · ITS FAMILY
The wikala is Cairo’s name for what the register records elsewhere as the funduq, the khan and the caravanserai; another surviving example, the Wikala of Sultan Qaytbay, stands in the same city. [1]
5 · ⚑ CANDOUR
⚑ Checked on 22 October 2026. Cells above and storage below hold for the wikala type; a single guarded gate is stated only of the funduq in general, not of Wikala al-Ghuri, and is left as the register’s. The building is dated 1504–05 by one source and 1503–04 (909–910 AH) by the ministry. [1–3]
Sources & Further Reading
Sources checked 22 October 2026.