Amr Ibn Al Aas came to Egypt as the commander in chief of the Arab troops in 640AD and almost immediately founded Egypt's first mosque. Originally the mosque was built as a place were the Arab troops could pray and was not very large. Throughout the centuries, however, the empires and dynasties that followed enlarged and modified the mosque significantly. The mosque's original area had been approximately 17x20 meters, today it measures 100x115 meters, it has a courtyard and minarets and is embellished with gold and silver. The result of these restorations is that today, only one wall of Amr Ibn Al As mosque belongs to the original construction and is thus not so representative of the earliest phase of Islamic architecture as it is of the changes that took place in the later years of Egypt's Islamic history. Old Cairo, Sharia Sidi Hasan al-Anwar.