Cairo a thousand minarets
Cairo has no connection to the Pharaonic period because the city was only founded in 969 AD. This story is about the foreign rulers who ruled Egypt for many centuries and built Cairo.
Most of these rulers did not rule from Cairo.
Egypt was mostly a province of a vast empire during this time, and Cairo was the capital of this province.
Only when Mohamed Ali arrives in Egypt does the development of Egypt continue. We are talking about the Caliphs and jurists from Mecca 632-868 AD.
Fatimids, 696-1160 AD.
The Ayyubids, 1160-1254 AD.
The Bahri Mamluks 1254-1382 AD.
The Circassian Mamluks 1382-1517 AD.
The Ottomans, 1517-1922 AD.
Alawiyya dynasty: 1805-1953 AD. (Mohamed Ali Dynasty)
Cairo a thousand minarets
Cairo is the capital of Egypt.
The metropolitan area of the city stands as one of the largest in Africa and the fifth largest in the world, linked to ancient Egypt.
because the famous pyramid complex of Giza and the ancient city of Memphis are located in the geographical area. Located near the Nile Delta.
Modern Cairo’s founding date is August 8, 969 AD.
by the Fatimid dynasty.
The land that the current city consists of was the site of ancient national capitals whose remains are still visible in parts of ancient Cairo.
Cairo has long been a center of political and cultural life in the region and is titled ‘the city because of the predominance of Islamic architecture.
Cairo holds a “Beta+” classification according to GaWC, making it a recognized global city.
The second oldest institution of higher education in the world is Al-Azhar University.
Many international media, companies, and organizations have regional headquarters in the city.
the Arab League has its headquarters in Cairo for most of its existence.
Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt.
Cairo, like many other megacities, suffers from a high level of pollution and traffic.
Cairo’s metro, one of two in Africa, the other is located in Algiers,
Algeria, is one of the fifteen busiest in the world, with over 1 billion annual passenger rides.
Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maṣr, the Arabic name for Egypt itself,
emphasizing the importance of the city, which means “the victorious.”
. The official name Qahirah means “the conqueror.”
The area around present-day Cairo, especially Memphis, which has been the ancient capital of Egypt since the predynastic period.
was a focal point of ancient Egypt due to its strategic location just upstream from the Nile Delta.
The origin of the modern city, however, is generally attributed to a series of settlements in the first millennium.
The Evolution of Cairo: From Ancient Fortress to Thriving Capital
Around the turn of the 4th century, Memphis continued to decline in importance.
The Romans founded a fortress city on the eastern bank of the Nile. This fortress, known as Babylon, was the core of the Roman and then the
Fatimid capital Mahdia in Tunisia in 973 AD, he gave the city its current name, al-Qāhiratu “The Victorious”.
Nearly 200 years after Cairo was founded, the administrative center of Egypt remained in Fustat. However, in 1168 AD
the Fatimids, under the leadership of vizier Shawar, who was only 18 years old, set fire to Fustat to prevent Cairo’s capture by the Crusaders.
The capital of Egypt was permanently moved to Cairo, which eventually expanded with the ruins of Fustat and the former capitals of al-Askar and al-Qatta’i.
As Al Qahira expanded, these earlier settlements were surrounded, and since then they have become part of the city of Cairo as it expanded and spread.
they are now collectively known as Old Cairo.
While Fustat was burning in a fire that lasted 54 days but successfully protected the city of Cairo.
a continuous power struggle between Shawar,
King Amalric I of Jerusalem and the Zengid general Shirkuh led to the downfall of the Fatimid establishment.
As the first sultan of Egypt, Salah el Dinn established the Ayyubid dynasty, based in Cairo,
and established Egypt with the Abbasids, who were based in Baghdad.
During his reign, Salah el Dinn built the Cairo Citadel,
which served as the seat of the Egyptian government until the mid-19th century.
In 1250, slave soldiers, known as the Mamluks,
took control of Egypt and established, like many of their predecessors, Cairo as the capital of their new dynasty.
Continuing a practice started by the Ayyubids, much of the land occupied by former Fatimid palaces was sold and replaced by newer buildings.
Construction projects initiated by the Mamluks pushed the city outward and also brought new infrastructure into the city center.
Cairo a thousand minarets
Meanwhile, Cairo flourished as a center of Islamic scholarship and a crossroads on the spice trade route between civilizations in Afro-Eurasia.
By 1340, Cairo had nearly half a million inhabitants, making it the largest city west of China.
The historic traveler Ibn Battuta traveled thousands of kilometers during his trek. One city he stopped in was Cairo,
One important note Ibn Battuta made.
was that Cairo was the main district of Egypt, meaning Cairo was the main and most influential city of Egypt.
Ibn Battuta also acknowledges the importance of the Nile River to all of Egypt, including Cairo, as he often travels by boat to arrive in Cairo and depart to continue his journey.
The Nile was not only a means of transportation, it was also the source of an abundance of other tangible goods.
The most influential feature of the Nile was its ability to sustain rich soil for agriculture.
Part of the agricultural revolution thrived in Egypt, mainly on the back of the Nile. The Nile also served as a source of food and a trade route.
Without it, the Egypt we know today would not have been the same. One of Ibn Battuta’s most detailed accounts in Cairo concerns a plague that devastated the city.
Today, this plague is known as the bubonic plague, or the Black Death. It is believed to have arrived in Egypt in 1347, as noted by Ibn Battuta.
the bubonic plague was responsible for the deaths of 1 to 20,000 people per day in Cairo.
The plague originated in Asia and spread through rodents, such as rats. The plague would spread to all of Eurasia and wipe out all civilizations in its path.
Estimates suggest that between 75 and 200 million people died in total from the plague.
The city’s status was further diminished after Vasco da Gama discovered a sea route around the Cape of Good Hope between 1497 and 1499, allowing spice traders to bypass Cairo.
The political influence of Cairo significantly declined after the Ottomans took over from the Mamluks in Egypt in 1517 and displaced them.
Ruling from Constantinople, Sultan Selim made Egypt a province, with Cairo as its capital.
For this reason, Cairo’s history during Ottoman times is often described as unimportant, especially compared to other periods.
Cairo a thousand minarets
However, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Cairo remained an important economic and cultural center.
Although no longer on the spice route, the city facilitated the transport of Yemeni coffee and Indian textiles.
mainly to Anatolia, North Africa, and the Balkans.
Merchants from Cairo were instrumental in bringing goods to the barren Hejaz, especially during the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.
It was during the same period that al-Azhar University reached dominance among Islamic schools that it still holds today.
By the 16th century, Cairo also featured high-rise apartments. The two lower floors served for commercial purposes and storage, while the multiple floors above were rented out as residential units.
Under the Ottomans, Cairo expanded to the south and west of its core around the Citadel.
The city was the second-largest in the empire, behind Constantinople, and while migration was not the primary source of Cairo’s growth.
twenty percent of the population by the end of the 18th century consisted of religious minorities and foreigners from the entire Mediterranean region.
However, when Napoleon arrived in Cairo in 1798, the city’s population was less than 300,000, forty percent lower than at the height of Mamluk and Cairene influence in the mid-14th century.
The French occupation was short-lived, as British and Ottoman forces, including a significant Albanian contingent, reconquered the country in 1801.
Cairo itself was besieged by British and Ottoman forces, culminating in the French surrender on June 22, 1801.
In 1805, the Albanian Muhammad Ali Pasha arrived, he became commander and eventually, with the approval of the religious establishment in Constantinople, viceroy of Egypt.
Until his death in 1848, Muhammad Ali Pasha instituted a number of social and economic reforms that earned him the title of founder of modern Egypt.
Although Muhammad Ali initiated the construction of public buildings in the city, those reforms had minimal impact on the landscape of Cairo.
Greater changes came to Cairo under Isma’il Pasha † 1863-1879, who continued the modernization processes initiated by his grandfather.
Entirely inspired by Paris, Isma’il wanted to replicate Paris in Cairo unfortunately due to financial constraints, It became a neighborhood of Cairo now the current Downtown.
Isma’il also attempted to modernize the city, which merged with neighboring settlements, by establishing a Ministry of Public Works, bringing gas and lighting to the city, and opening a theater and opera house.
The immense debt resulting from Isma’il’s projects provided a pretext for increasing European control, which culminated in the British invasion in 1882.
Cairo a thousand minarets
The economic center of the city quickly moved westward towards the Nile, away from the historic part of Islamic Cairo and towards the modern neighborhoods built by Isma’il in European style.
Europeans accounted for five percent of Cairo’s population by the end of the 19th century, occupying most top government positions.
The British occupation, initially intended to be temporary, extended well into the 20th century. Nationalists staged large demonstrations in Cairo in 1919, five years after Egypt was declared a British protectorate.
Although this led to Egypt’s independence in 1922, British troops remained in the country until 1956. During this time, urban Cairo.
stimulated by the construction of new bridges and transportation connections, and the expansion of chic neighborhoods such as Garden City, Zamalek, and Heliopolis.
Between 1882 and 1937, Cairo’s population more than tripled from 347,000 to 1.3 million, and its area grew from 10 to 163 square kilometers.
The city suffered devastation during the 1952 riots known as the Cairo Fire or Black Saturday, which resulted in the destruction of nearly 700 shops, cinemas, and other buildings.
casinos, and hotels in Downtown Cairo, the British left Cairo after the Egyptian revolution of 1952, but the city’s rapid growth showed no signs of abating.
President Gamal Abdel Nasser attempted to accommodate the increasing population,
has redeveloped Maidan Tahrir and the Nile Corniche and improved the city’s network of bridges and highways.
The metropolis began to encroach on the fertile Nile Delta,
which prompted the government to build desert satellite cities and create incentives for urbanites to move there.
Cairo’s population has doubled since the 1960s and reached nearly seven million inhabitants with an additional ten million in the urban area.
At the same time, Cairo has established itself as a political and economic center for North Africa and the Arab world,
with many multinational companies and organizations,
including the Arab League, operating outside the city.
Unfortunately, Cairo was heavily affected by an earthquake in 1992 that caused 545 deaths, 6,512 injuries, and 50,000 homeless people.
Today, Cairo is the national capital of Egypt,
so it is fair to say that it is still of great importance.
Many things have changed since Ibn Battuta was in the city.
Cairo has taken a big step in urbanization today, as most Cairenes now live in apartment buildings.
Due to the influx of people in the city, standalone houses are rare to find,
and apartment buildings accommodate the limited space and abundance of people.
In fact, standalone houses symbolize the wealthy.
Tahrir Square in Cairo served as the focal point of the Egyptian revolution of 2011, known as the Arab Spring.
against former President Hosni Mohamed Mubarak.
More than 2 million demonstrators were in Tahrir Square in Cairo. More than 50,000 demonstrators first occupied the square on January 25.
In the following days, Tahrir Square remained the main destination for protests in Cairo,
as it occurred after a popular uprising that began on Tuesday, January 25, 2011, and continued until June 2013.
The uprising was mainly a campaign of non-governmental organizations.
violent civil resistance, with a series of demonstrations, marches, acts of civil disobedience, and labor strikes.
Millions of demonstrators from various socio-economic and religious backgrounds demanded the overthrow of the regime of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
Although predominantly peaceful in nature.
the revolution was not without violent clashes between security forces and demonstrators, with at least 846 people killed and 6,000 injured. The uprising took place in Cairo, Alexandria, and other cities in Egypt.
On February 11, after weeks of determined popular protest and pressure, Hosni Mubarak resigned from office.
Cairo is located in northern Egypt, known as Lower Egypt,
165 kilometers south of the Mediterranean Sea and 120 kilometers
west of the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal.
The city lies along the Nile River, just south of the point where the river exits its desert-bound
valley and branches into the low-lying Nile Delta region.
Although the Cairo metropolitan area extends in all directions from the Nile, the city of Cairo
Situated only on the east bank of the river and two islands, it spans a total area of 453 square kilometers.
Until the mid-19th century, when dams, dikes, and other controls tamed the river.
the Nile near Cairo was highly susceptible to changes in course and surface level.
Over the years, the Nile gradually shifted westward, forming the spot between
the river’s eastern edge and the Mokattam highlands on which the city now stands.
Cairo was founded on the land in 969.
(present-day Islamic Cairo) lay underwater over three hundred years earlier.
when Fustat was first built.
Low periods of the Nile during the 11th century continued to contribute to Cairo’s landscape.
a new island, known as Geziret al-Fil, first appeared in 1174.
but eventually connected to the mainland.
Today, the site of Geziret al-Fil is occupied by the Shubra district.
The low periods created another island at the end of the 14th century. which now composes Zamalek and Gezira.
Land reclamation efforts by the Mamluks and the Ottomans further contributed to expansion on the east bank of the river.
Due to the movement of the Nile, the newer parts of the city such as Garden City.
Downtown Cairo, and Zamalek are closest to the riverbank.
The areas, which are home to most of Cairo’s embassies.
The older parts of the city surround Cairo to the north, east, and south.
Coptic Cairo. The Boulaq district, located in the northern part of the city.
originated from a large 16th-century port and has remained so.
