Equally if not more impressive than Ibn Tulun’s mosque is the neighbouring Gayer-Anderson Museum, which is off to the left, through a small entrance way, as you first enter the outer enclosure. The museum is a complete Orientalist fantasy: two sixteenth century houses joined by a covered bridge, with jasmine-scented courtyards, floor cushions and fountains, twisting passageways, and secret viewing galleries. All it lacks are its dark-eyed houris, although even they were briefly provided when Hollywood came here to film the James Bond adventure The Spy Who Loved Me.

The Gayer-Anderson for whom the place is named was a British officer in Egypt, a keen collector of antiquities. Around 1930, he was allowed to occupy these houses – until that time family residences – in return for financing their restoration and upkeep. During the decade or more that he lived here he repaired and rebuilt, and added a vast miscellany of paintings, statuettes, small pharaonic antiquates, and tribal artefacts to fill the maze of rooms.

On his return to England he bequeathed his work and collections to the Egyptian government. There are some wonderful local legends attached to the houses, including one concerning the courtyard well – said to be a passageway down to the domain of Sultan Watawit, Lord of the Bats.