La définition d'une stratégie d'intervention. La ... - RehabiMed

La définition d’une stratégie d’intervention.
La definición de una estrategia de intervención
Defining a strategy for intervention
The disintegration of the medieval city
of Cairo
Dalia Nabil Aly Abdul-Ghany
esearcher at CULTNAT Center for Documentation of Cultural & Natural
Heritage for the documentation of Ex-royal Palaces in Egypt, Jan. 2007
– until present time.
Director of The Development of Craftsmanship and Artistic Skills of
the Children of al-Darb al-Ahmar Neighbourhood in Cairo Project, Jan.
– Aug. 2006.
Researcher at Hampikian-Ibrashy for Architecture and Heritage
Management for various historic monuments for conservation
projects, and coordinator of a course for architectural conservation
and restoration designed for the inspectors of Antiquities in Cairo,
April-Aug. 2005 & Feb. – Aug. 2006.
Address:
1 Muhammad Labib al-Kirdany St.
Heliopolis, P.O. Box: 11361 – al-Hurriyyah
Cairo, Egypt
E-mail address:
strawbery@aucegypt.edu
Telephone:
+2 02 418 6873 / +2 010 8774707
Comparing photos of Cairo taken at intervals of time, one notices
that street views drastically changed especially in the post-colonial
period 1 . Medieval streets that once displayed marvelous mosques and
madrasas, hosting for foreign merchants coming from all over
the world for wholesale trade, markets full of oriental merchandise and
houses overlooking the streets with intriguing mashrabiyyas no longer
have these lively images of the past. Today these old streets only boast
with surviving religious monuments of mosques and madrasas, as for
secular buildings - , markets and houses, most of these are now
replaced by post-colonial apartment buildings, while the rest of the
surviving buildings suffer not only from negligence and serious damage
but also from continuous threat of destruction. The disappearance of
such buildings not only means the loss of the prominent aspects of
the secular life in the old city with its daily facets of trading, shopping
and living, but also the loss of what gives the city its lively spirit that all
historians and travelers appraisingly described (Pl. 1).
This paper is dedicated to discussing aspects of the disintegration of
the old city of Cairo, causes of deterioration and possible solutions for
the urban development of old districts of the city which were greatly
undermined as a result of poverty and neglect despite their high
authentic value.
Many of these buildings are houses dating to the nineteenth and
twentieth centuries. The importance of these houses lies in their hybrid
style; the traditional style developed in Egypt, the Rumi style imported
in the reign of Muhammad Ali (r. 1805-48) and the European style
genuine style of building that was rarely studied by art historians (Pl.
2).
Most of the nineteenth and twentieth century houses have different
settings from medieval houses in Cairo 2 . In the former the upper stories
of the house are divided into apartments; a central hall is always a
rooms (Pl. 1), a feature that was imported to Egypt in the nineteenth
century, presumably a Rumi
depicted in (Pl. 1) still shows a prevailing Egyptian style of wooden
mashrabiyyas, projecting window bays surmounted with crenellations
and decorated with muqarnas. Yet, the substitution of wooden shutters
for turned wood screens in windows is another innovation of the
nineteenth century. However in (Pl. 2), Western elements became
obviously part of the decorative program of façades in Egypt, such as
pediments and round arched niches.
The disintegration of the medieval city could be traced back to the
nineteenth century when a strong yearning to modernize Cairo led to
the establishment of new neighborhoods reminiscent of great Western
cities in Europe. This modernization movement was initiated by
Muhammad Ali and was further continued by his successors, however,
major works of urban development of the city were undertaken in
the reign of Khedive Ismail (r. 1863-79) and were mainly based on the
western zone to the medieval city comprising Downtown, Garden City,
and Zamalik quarters (Pl. 3). 3
These new neighborhoods were supplied with gas light in A.D. 1870
- then electricity in A.D. 1898 – and with paved streets linking the new
city with Shubra, Abbasiyya, Matariyya, the old city and Giza 4 . On the
other hand, the old city was greatly neglected and continued with its
old traditional system of municipal utilities, and so it fell into gradual
decline towards the end of the nineteenth century.
Furthermore, as part of the modernization process of the city, plans
were made to incorporate the old medieval quarters with the newly
built ones, and as a result, new wide streets were planned joining
districts such as al-Azbakiyya and al-Azhar with the citadel, and
consequently old streets and buildings soon perished; Muhammad
Ali Street was constructed in A.D. 1872 linking al-Ataba Square with
the citadel 5
by houses overlooking its banks - was filled in to serve as today’s Port
Said Street. Furthermore in the A.D. 1920s, al-Azhar Street penetrated
the east-west axis of the old city intersecting with the main Qasaba
of the Fatimid city and Port Said Street to finally reach the newly built
city on the west, while in the A.D.1950s, as Meinecke affirmed, al-Azhar
Square was constructed destroying a whole quarter of the city 6 . Many
old quarters were further westernized such as the lakes of al-Azbakiyya,
al-Fil and others that had been depicted in the famous work of the
French Expedition, La description de l’Egypte, with sailing boats and
lavish houses built around them, were also filled in to serve as gardens,
where the oriental style buildings were replaced with houses, hotels,
and cafés built in the European style 7 .
By the time these newly developed quarters were built, Khedive
Ismail as well as the wealthy people, who once lived in the old city,
enthusiastically moved out to their new palaces and villas 8 . Such
a migration of inhabitants from the old city to newer quarters is still
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