Cairo
Cairo
| Cairo (Arabic Al-Qahirah), capital in Egypt and chief-town of the
homonym governorship; it’s on the banks of the Nile, a little south of the
place where the river splits in the two branches of Rosetta and Damietta,
that characterize the Delta. The intense process of urbanization in the
last decades has expanded the city borders, that go on with the populous
suburbs in the desert territory and on the slopes of mount Muqattam, that
dominates the urban area. The main industrial center in Egypt, Cairo is
the place of iron and steel industries, textile, chemical, and motor
industries. It has four airports (of which two are international), the
city is the political, administrative and commercial heart of the nation,
the main junction of road, railway and fluvial communications of the
country (harbors on the Nile) and also an important tourist center. With
an urban agglomerate of around 17.000.000 inhabitants, it’s the largest
political and cultural center for Islam, the largest metropolis of the
Arabic world and of the whole African continent. Urbanity and interesting places The city of today extends itself mostly over the right bank of the Nile and it also includes the al-Gezira and al-Roda islands. The urban agglomerate, that constantly expands, occupies the whole Al-Qahira governorship and includes, among others, the Giza, Eliopoli and Imbaba cities. Cairo has kept many and very precious finds from the past. The most famous and ancient of these are the pyramids and the Sphinx that are west of Cairo, in the Giza area; a little further there is the equally famous archaeological area in Saqqara which includes the most interesting part of the necropolis of ancient Menfi. The large old-town center (al-Fustat) is very suggestive, delimited by eight monumental doors, among which the beautiful Bab al-Nasr, Bab al-futuh and Bab Zwwaila (end of XI century) stand out. There are many places of cult, that go back to different epochs, and have an important role for Islamic history, from the very ancient Ibn Tulun, an austere mosque built between 876 and 879, to the fourteenth-century Aq Sunqar and Madrasa in Hasan. A particular attention goes to the mosque in al-Azhar, to which is attached the homonym religious university founded in 970, this is the most ancient and influential university of the Islamic world. Preciuos palaces show the prosper past of the city; among these the most significant is Beshtag, from 1334. It’s extremely picturesque, finally, the commercial area in Khan al Khalili, a labyrinth of little streets that have always been used for the bazaar. Placed on the top of a hill, in the eastern part of the old town center, the Cittadel has various mosques and the fort; although it was built by the sultan Salahuddin al-Ayoubi in 1176, it has nineteenth-century shapes. At the opposite end of the city, there is the Cairo University, founded in 1919. The famous Egyptian Museum, built in 1900, keeps precious archaeological finds of the ancient Egyptian civilization, among which king Tutankhamon’s collection. The Museum of Arabic and Islamic art, created in 1903, has many documents of the past. The Coptic Museum, which is in a building in the ancient district of the old-town center, which is still inhabited by the Christian minority, traces the history of the populous and important Coptic community in Egypt.
the original nucleus of the city of Cairo was Al-Fustat, an Arabic
encampment near a roman fort. The establishment of an independent power by
the Fatimidi led in 1969 to the foundation of a new city, called Al-Qahira
(the victorious), placed in the Cairo of today. Besides the city walls and
the three doors built by the Fatimidi, even th Al-Azhar and Al-Hakim
mosques go back to this period. Both the Ayyubiti and the Mamelucs chose
Cairo as the capital of their reign, enriching it with buildings, mostly
religious. In 1517 the city passed under the Ottoman domination that went
on to 1798, year of the French occupation by Napoleon. In 1801 the Ottoman
government was established again and four years later the power was
conquered by Muhammad Ali who ordered to build the mosque named after him.
The funds given by foreign countries to build the Suez canal put Egypt
under the colonial influence and, from the end of the XIX century until
the Bfirst post-war period, the country was governed by British
authorities, although staying formally under the Ottoman sovereignty.
Obtaining independence in 1922, Cairo knew a great demographic development
in the period between the two world conflicts and, also thanks to the role
the country had had in foreign politic in the last decades, it recovered
the ancient prestige in the Muslim world, proved with the city being
chosen as the place for the Arabic League. Inhabitants: 6.789.000 (1998) |
