The Fatimid general Jawhar al-Siqilli founded Cairo in 969 for Caliph al-Mu'izz, and construction of Al-Azhar began the following year. Completed for prayer in 972, it served as the congregational mosque of the new royal city and a center for Isma'ili Shi'a teaching. Its name became associated with Fatima al-Zahra, daughter of the Prophet Muhammad and claimed ancestor of the Fatimid dynasty. The earliest mosque was smaller than today's complex, organized around an open courtyard and hypostyle prayer hall using columns and materials from older buildings.

Regular instruction developed within the mosque, creating a scholarly tradition that would become Al-Azhar. When Saladin ended Fatimid rule in 1171 and established Sunni authority, Friday prayer at Al-Azhar was suspended for generations while other institutions received favor. Teaching nevertheless survived and later revived. Mamluk patrons added madrasas, portals, minarets, prayer spaces, and endowments, turning the mosque into a major Sunni center. Students and scholars came from across Africa and Asia to study Qur'an, law, Arabic, theology, logic, and other subjects within a network of residential communities.

Ottoman governors and wealthy patrons continued expanding and repairing Al-Azhar. Abd al-Rahman Katkhuda's eighteenth-century campaign enlarged the prayer hall, added a new façade and gate, and introduced a distinctive minaret. Scholars there could influence public life, mediate disputes, and oppose abuses, while the French occupation of Egypt brought violence and intrusion into the mosque. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, educational reform created modern faculties and administrative systems beyond the historic precinct. Al-Azhar became both an ancient mosque-university and a large contemporary institution with national and international authority.

No single phase represents the entire monument. Fatimid wall lines, courtyard arcades, and stucco coexist with Mamluk madrasas and minarets, Ottoman additions, later rebuilding, structural reinforcement, cleaning, and modern services. Restoration has sometimes removed or recreated finishes to emphasize selected periods. Columns themselves were reused from earlier Roman and Byzantine buildings, complicating the idea of original material. The mosque remains an active sacred and educational place, so carpets, lighting, sound systems, security, circulation controls, and routine repairs are functional modern layers rather than attempts to reproduce a tenth-century interior.

Al-Azhar is managed through Egypt's religious and state institutions within the Historic Cairo World Heritage area. Worship and study take priority, and non-Muslim or tourist access depends on current rules, prayer schedules, dress, and conservation work. Interpretation should avoid calling it simply the world's oldest university without explaining how teaching evolved and how the modern university became institutionally distinct. Its importance lies in continuous religious learning and architectural accumulation. Authenticity is found in layered fabric from many dynasties, not in a uniform Fatimid building reconstructed unchanged across a millennium.