Visitors are admitted to most of the Mosques (p. xxv) and to the Mameluke Tombs (p. [458]) daily except Frid. and at the hour of noonday prayer. Ticket (2 pias.) at the entrance. Fee of ½–1 pias. to the attendant who supplies slippers.
Three Days (when time is limited). 1st. Forenoon, Muski (p. [446]), Market Quarter (p. [446]), *Gâmia el-Azhar (p. [447]), Muristân Kâlaûn (p. [448]), *Gâmia el-Muaiyad (p. [450]), Bâb Zuweileh (p. [450]); afternoon, Mameluke Tombs (p. [458]) or Gezîreh (p. [457]) or Heliopolis Oasis (p. [459]).—2nd. Forenoon, Arab Museum (p. [450]; closed Frid.), Medreseh Kâït Bey (p. [451]), *Gâmia Ibn Tulûn (p. [451]); afternoon, *Gâmia Sultân Hasan (p. [452]), Citadel (p. [453]).—3rd. Forenoon, *Egyptian Museum (p. [455]; closed Frid.); afternoon, *Pyramids of Gîzeh (p. [461]).—Intercourse with natives, see p. xxv.—Guides, touts, and beggars should be summarily shaken off.
Cairo, Arabic El-Kâhira or Masr el-Kâhira, or simply Masr or Misr (after the old Semitic name of Egypt), lies in 30° 4′ N. lat. and 31° 17′ E. long., on the right bank of the Nile, about 12½ M. to the S. of the ‘cow’s belly’, where the river divides into the Rosetta and Damietta arms (p. [418]).—On the E. side of the city, which covers an area of about 11 sq. M., rise the reddish rocky slopes of the Mokattam Hills (p. [454]; about 650 ft.), marking the beginning of the Arabian desert.
Cairo, the largest city in Africa and in the whole of the Arabian world, is the residence of the Khedive and of all the chief authorities. The population is estimated at 630,000, including 50,000 Europeans, chiefly Greeks and Italians. The great majority of the citizens are Egypto-Arabian, Fellah (peasant) settlers, Christian Copts (also nearly pure descendants of the ancient Egyptians), Nubians, Turks, Armenians, and (about 6000) Jews; then negroes of many different tribes, Berbers and Arabs from the N. African seaboard, Bedouins (nomadic Arabs), Syrians, Persians, Indians. The street scenes in the older quarters are very curious and picturesque.
History. In hoar antiquity a suburb of Heliopolis (p. [459]) lay on the E. bank of the Nile, opposite the great Pyramids, and was called by the Egyptians Kherē-ohē, or place of combat, because the gods Horus and Seth, the tutelary deities of Upper and Lower Egypt respectively, are said to have fought there. The Greeks called it Babylon, probably in imitation of the Egyptian name of the island of Rôda, Perhapi-n-On, the ‘Nile city of On’ (Heliopolis). The Roman citadel of Babylon was garrisoned under Augustus by one of the three legions stationed in Egypt. In 611 A.D. the town was conquered by Amr ibn el-Âsî (p. [433]), who founded the new capital of the country in the plain to the N. of the fortress, a city which, unlike Alexandria, was to be free from the hated Christian element. On the site of his fostât or tent he built a mosque, and the new city then took the name of Fostât. Between Fostât and the citadel and adjoining the older suburb of El-Askar (of 815) the new quarter of El-Katâi was begun by Ahmed ibn Tulûn (868–83), founder of the Egyptian dynasty of the Tulunides, but it was burned down in 905. The Cairo of to-day owes its origin mainly to Gôhar, the general of the Fatimites (p. [323]), who conquered Egypt in 969 and founded a new town to the N.E. of El-Katâi and made it the residence of the caliph and head quarters of his army. At the hour when its foundations were laid the planet Mars (Arabic Kâhir, ‘the victorious’) is said to have crossed the meridian of the new city, whence it received its new name of Masr el-Kâhira or El-Kâhira, while Fostât was afterwards called, by way of distinction, Masr el-Kadîmeh or el-Atika (Old Cairo). In 973 Abû Teminn el-Muizz transferred his residence from Mehdia (p. [369]) to Cairo. Two centuries later the famous Saladin comes prominently on the scene. This was the Kurd general of mercenaries, Salâheddîn Yûsuf ibn Aiyûb, who, on the death of the last Fatimite in 1171, usurped the supreme power. He built a new citadel on the slope of the Mokattam Hills and enclosed the whole city with a wall 29,000 ells long (p. [453]), and Cairo soon became the most populous place in N. Africa next to Fez. Under the dynasty of the Aiyubides (1171–1250) and the Mameluke Dynasties (Bahrite, 1250–1382, and Circassian or Borgite, 1382–1517), the sultans chosen from the white body-guard, Cairo witnessed almost continuous scenes of revolution, rapine, and bloodshed. In 1302 it suffered severely also from an earthquake, and terribly in 1295 and 1492 from the plague. And yet, in spite or all these disasters, the city grew and prospered wonderfully.
After his victory at Heliopolis in 1517 the Osman sultan Selim I. (p. [542]) marched into Cairo; Tûman Bey, the last Mameluke sultan, was captured and executed; and Selim caused the finest marble columns in the citadel to be removed to Constantinople. Cairo now became the seat of a bey (‘prince’), who was placed over the twenty-four Mameluke chiefs entrusted with the government of Egypt and was controlled by a Turkish pasha. Thenceforth the city was a mere provincial capital.
It was not till 1798 that Cairo again became prominent in history. After the Battle of the Pyramids Bonaparte had his headquarters for several months in the ancient city of the caliphs. From Cairo in 1799 he started on his Syrian expedition; and when he returned to France Kléber remained behind as commander-in-chief of the French troops. Kléber was assassinated in Cairo in 1800, and the following year the French garrison, hard pressed by the grand-vizier and the British troops, had to capitulate.
Under Mohammed Ali (1805–48), the new Turkish pasha, with whom begins the modern chapter in the chequered history of Egypt, and who did much to develop the resources of the country, the citadel of Cairo witnessed another tragedy in 1811, when by his order the last of the Mameluke beys were shot (comp. p. [453]). His successors, particularly Ismaîl (1863–79; Khedive or viceroy from 1867) and Tewfik (Arabic Taufîk; 1879–92), greatly improved and extended the city by the construction of new quarters (Ismaîlîyeh and Tewfîkîyeh, p. [454]), though to the prejudice of its mediæval architecture; and under the present Khedive Abbâs II. Hilmi (b. 1874) Cairo has expanded as far as the islands in the Nile. Since the defeat of the national party under Arâbi Bey (p. [433]) in 1882 the country in general and Cairo in particular have prospered greatly. The paramount British control of the administration is more noticeable at Cairo than at Alexandria or on the Suez Canal.
A convenient short history of Cairo is ‘The Story of Cairo’, by Stanley Lane-Poole, in the ‘Mediæval Towns Series’ (2nd ed., London, 1906). Comp, also ‘Cairo and its Environs’, by A. O. Lamplough and R. Francis (London, 1909, illus.; 20s.) and ‘The City of the Caliphs’, by E. A. Reynolds-Ball (Boston and London, 1897).
History of Art. The Arabian architecture of Egypt is founded partly on antique, on Byzantine, and on Coptic models which the conquerors of the country found ready to their hand, and partly on Persian types, developed under the Sassanides and adopted by the Arabs with the aid of native builders. The chief Arabian edifices at Cairo are the mosques, the fountains, and the tombs. The period of their construction extends from the time of the Tulunides (9th cent.) down to the conquest of Egypt by the Turks (1517). Of the earlier buildings, known to us only from the fantastic descriptions of Arabian authors, hardly a trace is left. The later edifices, partly of Arabian-Turkish type with Egyptian-Arabian ornamentation, seldom show much artistic merit.