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North elevation, showing the various massings of the elevation; The mosque known as al-Azhar ('the Radiant') was begun in 970 CE as the principal mosque of al-Qahira. Completed in 972, it was made a teaching institution in 988-989, and its present renown is due to the prestige of its almost unbroken tradition as an educational centre. The original mosque was a rectangle (about 85 x 70 m) with arcades on three sides of a court. There was no arcade opposite the qibla, but there may have been a monumental portal like that at the earlier mosque built by the Fatimids at Mahdia in Tunisia or the later Cairene mosque of al-Hakim. At the centre of the qibla side a raised transept on paired columns leads to a dome over the mihrab bay, an arrangement recalling Mahdia, and domes cover the back corners of the hypostyle prayer-hall, otherwise covered with a flat wooden roof. The mosque walls preserve a considerable amount of the original stucco decoration, which has the peculiarity of being exclusively epigraphic or vegetal, omitting the interlaced geometric motifs found at the mosques of Ibn Tulun and al-Hakim. Nothing of the original exterior remains, as the mosque was repeatedly restored and enlarged with additional prayer-halls, minarets, madrasas, shops and places for ablution. Source: Grove Art Online; http://www.groveart.com/ (accessed 1/18/2008)