The American Sephardi Federation commends Egypt’s Tourism and Antiquities police on recovering lamps stolen from Cairo’s Al-Rifa’i Mosque.
Unbeknownst to many, the Al-Rifa’i mosque was designed by a Jewish architect. After construction languished and the project was abandoned for a large number of years, Max Herz, a Hungarian Jewish architect who was the head of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe, restarted the project in 1905, completing it in 1912. For more information on this site and other notable sites in Muslim-majority countries built by forgotten Jewish architects, please visit ASF’s partner in digital preservation, Diarna: Geo-Museum of North African and Middle Eastern Jewish Life’s, exhibition:
http://diarna.org/exhibits/architects/
Other notable architects and sites included in the exhibit:
Yassi Gabbay’s Abbasi Hotel at Esfahan, Iran
Maurice Cattaui and Edward Matasek’s Bab al-Louq at Cairo, Egypt
Moses Somake’s Gaon Association Hall, Bai Virbaijee Soparivala (BVS) Parsi High School, Flagstaff House, and Mules Mansion at Karachi, Pakistan
and Arieh Sharon’s University of Ife, Ile-Ife, Nigeria