Cairo’s official name is
al-Qāhirah, which means literally: “Place or Camp of Mars“, in reference to the
fact that the planet was rising at the time of the city’s foundation as well
as, “the Vanquisher“; “the Conqueror“; “the Victorious” or, “the Strong”
(al-Qahira) in reference to the much awaited Caliph Al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah who
arrived from the old Fatimid capital of Mahdia in 973 AD to the city.
The area around present-day Cairo, especially Memphis, which was the old capital of Pharaonic Egypt, had long been a focal point of Ancient Egypt due to its strategic location just upstream from the Nile Delta. However, the origins of the modern city are generally traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium. Around the turn of the 4th century, as Memphis was continuing to decline in importance, the Romans established a fortress town along the east bank of the Nile. This fortress, known as Babylon, was the nucleus of the Roman and then the Byzantine city and is the oldest structure in the city today.
It is also situated at the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, which separated from the Roman and Byzantine churches in the late 4th century. Many of Cairo's oldest Coptic churches, including the Hanging Church, are located along the fortress walls in a section of the city known as Coptic Cairo. |
| Coptic Hanging Church |
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| Ruins of Babylon Fortress |
Following the Muslim conquest in AD 640, the conqueror Amr Ibn El-As settled to the north of the Babylon in an area that became known as El-Fustat.
Originally a tented camp (Fustat signifies "Tents") Fustat became a permanent settlement and the first capital of Islamic Egypt.
This was El-Qatta'i ("the Quarters"), to the north of Fustat and closer to the river. El Qatta'i was centered around a palace and ceremonial mosque, now known as the Mosque of Ibn Tulum.
In 905, the Abbasids re-asserted control of the country and their governor returned to Fustat, razing al-Qatta'i to the ground.
In 969, the Fatimid empire ruled over Egypt with an army of Kutamas, and under the rule of Jawhar Al Saqili, a new fortified city northeast of Fustat was established. It took four years to build the city, initially known as El-Manṣūriyyah, which was to serve as the new capital of the caliphate. During that time, the construction of the El-Azhar Mosque was commissioned by order of the Caliph, which developed into the third-oldest university in the world.
Al-Azhar University & Mosque
For nearly 200 years after Cairo
was established, the administrative centre of Egypt remained in Fustat.
However, in 1168 the Fatimid vizier Shawar set fire to Fustat to prevent its
capture by Amalric, the Crusader king of Jerusalem. Egypt's capital was
permanently moved to Cairo, which was eventually expanded to include the ruins
of Fustat and the previous capitals of al-Askar and al-Qatta'i. As al Qahira
expanded these earlier settlements were encompassed, and have since become part
of the city of Cairo as it expanded and spread; they are now collectively known
as "Old Cairo".
While the Fustat fire successfully
protected the city of Cairo, a continuing power struggle between Shawar, King
Amalric I of Jerusalem, and the Zengid general Shirkuh led to the downfall of
the Fatimid establishment.
In 1169, Saladin was appointed as
the new 
vizier of Egypt by the Fatimids and two years later he seized power
from the family of the last Fatimid caliph, al-'Āḍid. As the
first Sultan of Egypt, Saladin established the Ayyubid dynasty, based in Cairo,
and aligned Egypt with the Abbasids, who were based in Baghdad. During his
reign, Saladin constructed the Cairo Citadel, which served as the seat of the
Egyptian government until the mid-19th century.
A multi-domed mosque dominates the walled Citadel, with ruined tombs and a lone minaret in front.
The Cairo Citadel, seen above in
the late 19th century, was commissioned by Saladin between 1176 and 1183.
In 1250, slave soldiers, known as the Mamluks, seized control of Egypt and like many of their predecessors established 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 while also bringing new infrastructure to the centre of the city. Meanwhile, Cairo flourished as a centre of Islamic scholarship and a crossroads on the spice trade route among the civilizations in Afro-Eurasia. By 1340, Cairo had a population of close to half a million, making it the largest city west of China.
When the traveler Ibn Battuta first came to Cairo in 1326, he described it as the principal district of Egypt. When he passed through the area again on his return journey in 1348 the Black Death was ravaging most major cities. He cited reports of thousands of deaths per day in Cairo.
Muhammad Ali's seizure of power
Although Cairo avoided Europe's stagnation during the Late Middle Ages, it could not escape the Black Death, which struck the city more than fifty times between 1348 and 1517. During its initial, and most deadly waves, approximately 200,000 people were killed by the plague, and, by the 15th century, Cairo's population had been reduced to between 150,000 and 300,000.
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, thereby allowing spice traders to avoid Cairo. Cairo's political influence diminished significantly after the Ottomans supplanted Mamluk power over Egypt in 1517. Ruling from Constantinople, Sultan Selim I relegated Egypt to a province, with Cairo as its capital. For this reason, the history of Cairo during Ottoman times is often described as inconsequential, especially in comparison to other time periods.
However, during the 16th and 17th centuries, Cairo remained an important economic and cultural centre. Although no longer on the spice route, the city facilitated the transportation of Yemeni coffee and Indian textiles, primarily to Anatolia, North Africa, and the Balkans. Cairo merchants were instrumental in bringing goods to the barren Hejaz, especially during the annual hajj to Mecca. It was during this same period that El-Azhar University reached the predominance among Islamic schools that it continues to hold today; pilgrims on their way to hajj often attested to the superiority of the institution, which had become associated with Egypt's body of Islamic scholars.
Under the Ottomans, Cairo expanded south and west from its nucleus around the Citadel. The city was the second-largest in the empire, behind Constantinople, and, although migration was not the primary source of Cairo's growth, twenty percent of its population at the end of the 18th century consisted of religious minorities and foreigners from around the Mediterranean. Still, when Napoleon arrived in Cairo in 1798, the city's population was less than 300,000, forty percent lower than it was at the height of Mameluke influence in the mid-14th century.
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| Bab Zouela |
The French occupation was short-lived as British and Ottoman forces, including a sizeable Albanian contingent, recaptured the country in 1801.
A British and Ottoman force culminating with the French surrender on 22 June 1801 besieged Cairo itself. The British vacated Egypt two years later, leaving the Ottomans, the Albanians, and the weakened Mamluk jostling for control of the country. Continued civil war allowed an Albanian named Muhammad Ali Pasha to ascend to the role of commander and appointed himself the ottoman “Wali” governor of Egypt and eventually, with the approval of the religious establishment, he became viceroy of Egypt in 1805.
Mohamed Ali is regarded as the father and founder of modern Egypt due to the extensive reforms to the economic, military, and cultural aspects of Egypt. He used his leadership skills, political intelligence, and cunning to bring peace, prosperity, law, and order to Egypt that was transformed into a true superpower and great influences all over the world at the time.
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| Al Moezz Street |
He used his support of the general
public and the religious establishment to work on taking more control and
charger of the country and to eliminate the Mamluks who controlled Egypt for
more than 600 years. On the First of March in 1181, the Mamluks gathered in the
Cairo citadel and Muhammad Ali’s troops began killing all the sixty-four Mamluks,
including twenty-four commanders, he then dispatched his troops through Egypt
to destroy any remaining traces of the Mamluk forces. He had a dream of
creating his own dynasty and his own kingdom away from the decaying Ottoman
Empire, that’s why he transformed Egypt into a regional power and declared
himself the rightful successor. His dynasty ruled Egypt from its date of
foundation in 1805 until 1952 AD following the Egyptian Revolution.
He developed a strategy based on agriculture as he planted crops for the sole purpose of exportation like rice, sugarcane, and especially cotton. All the income from agricultural production and export was used to develop public work and national projects like irrigation, canals, dams, and barrages. He also disbanded his foreign army and created a fleet and an army of pure Egyptians who was commanded by the Turks and trained by French commanders in the art of warfare. He also started an educational revolution as he constructed Western-style schools and universities to produce doctors, engineers, veterinarians, and other specialists. He sent educational expeditions to Europeans who were trained in modern techniques to complete his bureaucrats.
Muhammad Ali and his successors figured out how to drain the swamp, using technology that was introduced by the French and improved on by them. They drained the Nile Delta, turning it into farmland, and drained the land west of the medieval city of Cairo. Building a new city along the Nile that would serve as a business center, with factories and warehouses and ports so that the new Egypt would be able to manufacture its own products. He named the city Bulaq. A French name given to the then the lake “Beau Lac”
He launched an industrial age in Egypt as he built factories to produce sugar, glass, and textile that competed with the European product, and build ships, weapons for the new army, and navy. There was also a dark side to his master plan as he added excessive taxation to pay for all his expensive projects which led him to lose a great deal of his public support. His over control on agriculture expanded his monopolization of world trade, which led to a bad relationship with Britain, which saw Egypt as a threat to their economical influence. .
In the late 1800s more squares were added throughout the city to reflect the new "European-ness" of the city. And in the early 1900s, Cairo jumped the river to two small islands in the Nile. Two upper class neighborhoods were built - Manial on Roda, and Zamalek on Gezira - so that the wealthy of Cairo could escape the crowded city. Also in the early 1900s, Europeans built the first satellite city around Cairo - called Heliopolis.
Also built for the wealthy citizens of Cairo, Heliopolis was built in the desert to the northeast of the city, and connected to Cairo by tram. A spa was built at the springs of Helwan to the south of the city, also connected by tram to the city center.
The village of Helwan, once an elegant spa of “Sulfuric Waters” nearly twenty miles distant from the city center at the southern end of Cairo, has now become a center of heavy industry in Egypt.
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| Helouan Sulfuric Source |
Pictures and articles collected from Internet
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