Cairo is not a 
Pharaonic city, though the presence of the Pyramids leads many to believe otherwise. At the time the Pyramids were built, the capital of ancient Egypt was Memphis, 20km southeast of the Giza Plateau.
Pharaonic city, though the presence of the Pyramids leads many to believe otherwise. At the time the Pyramids were built, the capital of ancient Egypt was Memphis, 20km southeast of the Giza Plateau.
The core foundations of the city of Cairo were laid in AD 969 by the Fatimid dynasty, but the city’s history goes further back than that. There was an important ancient religious centre at On (modern-day Heliopolis). The Roman built a fortress at the port of On, which they called Babylon, while Amr ibn al-As, the general who conquered Egypt for Islam in AD 642, established the city of Fustat nearby. Yet in the 10th century, when the Fatimids marched in from modern-day Tunisia, they spurned Fustat and instead set about building a new city.
Construction began on the new capital, probably on purpose, when the planet Mars (Al-Qahir, “the Victorious”) was in the ascendant; thus arose Al-Madina al-Qahira, “the city of victorious”, the pronunciation of which Europeans corrupted to Cairo.
Many imposing buildings from the Fatimid era remain today: the great Al-Azhar Mosque and university is still Egypt’s main centre of Islamic study, and the three great gates of Bab an-Nasr, Bab al-Futuh and Bab Zuweila still straddle two of Islamic Cairo’s main thoroughfares. The Fatimids were not to remain long in power, but their city survived them and, under subsequent dynasties, became a capital of great wealth.
Cairo remained a medieval city for 900 years, until the mid-19th century, when Ismail, grandson of Mohammed Ali, decided it was time for change. During his 16-year reign (1863-79), Ismail did more than anyone since the Fatimids to alter the city’s appearance.
When the French-educated Ismail came to power, he was determined to remake his capital into a city of European standing. For 10 years the former marsh became one vast building site as Ismail invited architects from Belgium, France and Italy to design and build a new European-style Cairo beside the old Islamic city.
Since the revolution of 1952 the population of Cairo has grown spectacularly – although at the expense of Ismail’s vision. Building maintenance fell by the wayside as apartments were overcrowded. In the 1960s and 1970s, urban planners concreted over the sparsely populated west bank of the Nile for desperately needed new suburbs. In more recent decades, growth has crept beyond Muqattam Hills on the east and the Pyramids on the west. Luxe gated communities, sprawling housing blocks and full satellite cities, complete with malls and megastores, spring up from the desert every year: 6th of October City, New Cairo and others are the new Egyptian dream. Whether the desert and the economy can sustain them remains to be seen.
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