Water · a Light

Cairo put a school for children above the drinking fountain

Ottoman Cairo built hundreds of small corner buildings of a single type: a sabil below and a kuttab above. The sabil was a public cistern with bronze grilles onto the street, where anyone could take a cup of cold water for nothing. Above it, open to the air, sat a room where children learned to read the Qur'an. The cistern underneath held the year's supply, filled at the Nile flood and carried in by water sellers. The best known, built by Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda in 1744, still stands where the main street of the old city forks. A report in the Sunan collections has the Prophet ﷺ answer that the best charity is water, and founders of fountains have quoted it for centuries.

Cairo · Ottoman period

Source · Sunan Abi Dawud and Sunan Ibn Majah