ancient cities

98 Cairo, Egypt
conquered and settled in Egypt in AD 641, they
built their first mosque (the first in Africa), the
Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque, immediately north of
Misr Al-Qadimah. Muslim troops then built the
city of Fustat as an expansion to the existing town.
Fustat became the capital of the province of Egypt.
Arab rulers and dynasties that followed continued
the city’s northward expansion. The Tulinids
under Ahmad Ibn Tulun built the splendid Ibn
Tulun Mosque (AD 879), which once more moved
the town center north. In AD 969, the Fatimid rulers
started building the walled city of Al-Qahirah
north of the existing city. The Fatimid mosque and
university of Al-Azhar (AD 972) came to be the
oldest university in the world and remains a central
institution of Muslim learning. The Ayyubids
under Salah al-Din added the citadel above the city
(AD 1182) to the east and further fortified the city.
Under the Fatimids, Ayyubids, and the Mamluks
(1250–1517), Cairo was a vibrant merchant city
and the site of magnificent palaces, mosques, and
large trading yards. In the fourteenth century Cairo
had around 500,000 residents and was one of the
largest cities in the world, larger than its European
contemporaries.
The discovery of the sea route around the Cape
of Good Hope to India in 1498 harmed Cairo’s
role as a trading city, when goods started to bypass
the eastern Mediterranean. Cairo’s expansion
slowed down as it became a more regional center.
Nonetheless, the city slowly started to spill over
the Fatimid walls and the older quarters. By the
eighteenth century, many craftsmen had left the
increasingly crowded city and had moved their
shops north, beyond the gate of Bab El-Futuh, to
the quarter of Husainiyah. Others moved south to
Sayida Zeinab. Similarly, the area around a small
lake immediately west of the walled city, which
had been used for summer homes, turned into a
permanent quarter, Ezbekiya. By the late eighteenth
century, the lake’s waterfront was lined with
splendid mansions of wealthy merchants. Finally,
the small port town of Bulaq west of the city on the
Nile was a thriving merchants and crafts town.
European Conquest,
Modernity, Colonialism
In 1798, Napoleon Bonaparte invaded Egypt.
Bombing its way into Alexandria, his army defeated
the Egyptian forces by the village of Embaba,
then crossed the Nile at Giza and conquered
Cairo. The French army confiscated the lakefront
mansions in Ezbekiya to set up their quarters.
Although the French occupation lasted for only
three years and as such was fairly inconsequential,
it ushered in some transformations. After some
years of local strife, Muhammad Ali, an Albanian
officer who had been fighting for the Ottoman
forces sent to defeat the French, was successful
in gaining control over the country in 1805. To
prevent further European attacks in a political climate
of aggressive imperialism, he designed projects
of forceful modernization to make Egypt an
equal to the European powers. Muhammad Ali
(ruled 1805–1848) did not use an urban master
plan but changed specific elements of Cairo’s
physical and political structure. Cutting main thoroughfares
through dense urban quarters (Sharia
Muhammad Ali), setting up new institutions (governmental
printing press in Bulaq, hospital and
medical school of Qasr Al-Aini), and introducing
new styles (using European architects), he implanted
vague seeds of a modern city while keeping much
of the existing cityscape intact.
In later decades of the nineteenth century,
Muhammad Ali’s descendants, in particular
Khedive Ismail (ruled 1863–1879), intensified
Cairo’s modernization. Inspired by the architecture
of Paris, Ismail set out to create his “Paris on
the Nile.” Using the time-honored method of
expansion just outside the city, he designed the
tract of land between Ezbekiya and the Nile front
south of Bulaq to become “Ismailiyah,” his modern
city. A street grid was laid out and regulations
formulated that all construction there had to be
modern. The Qasr El-Nil Bridge across the Nile
was opened in 1872, initiating Giza’s integration
into Cairo’s cityscape. European powers deposed
Ismail in 1879, and only three years later, in 1882,
Egypt was invaded by the British. The British longterm
high commissioner in Egypt, Lord Cromer
(1883–1907), who ruled Egypt with an iron fist,
had no comprehensive urban vision but acted
solely with a view to increasing political power
and economic profits. For Cairo this meant that
developers and speculators were free to do as they
pleased. Within a larger context of global economic
boom and colonial speculation, Cairo witnessed an
unprecedented economic and construction boom.