Clockwise from upper left: Cairo Citadel, Qaytbay Mausoleum, Al-Azhar Mosque, Khan El-Khalili (Photos by Don Knebel)
Today, in our continuing tour of Egypt, we spend our last day in Cairo, visiting an area usually called “Islamic Cairo.”
Islamic Cairo is the portion of the city built between 641 A.D., when Muslims conquered the area, and the city’s expansion in the nineteenth century. In 1979, UNESCO named the area a World Cultural Heritage site because “one of the world’s oldest Islamic cities, with its famous mosques, madrasas, hammams and fountains” became “the new centre of the Islamic world, reaching its golden age in the 14th century.” Today, many of the sites in Islamic Cairo are famous in their own right. The Cairo Citadel, a walled fortress featuring massive cylindrical bastions, was erected by Saladin, the great Muslim leader, in the twelfth century to protect Cairo and Egypt’s nearby former capital of Fustat from attacks from the Crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem. In 1828, Muhammad Ali, Egypt’s Ottoman ruler, began building an imposing mosque on the Citadel hilltop modeled on Istanbul’s Blue Mosque. The domed mausoleum of Sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay in the large cemetery near the Citadel was completed in 1474 and served as the model for later tombs. Khan El-Khalili, a sprawling outdoor market, is the most visited site in Egypt, attracting both locals and visitors from around the world. For anyone not interested in haggling with the merchants, a small area above the street offers goods at fixed prices. Near Khan El-Khalili is the El-Hussein Mosque, one of the holiest Islamic sites in Egypt. During Friday prayers, the mosque attracts so many worshippers that many pray outside under enormous awnings that open to shade visitors from the midday sun. The nearby Al-Azhar Mosque, Cairo’s oldest mosque, is open to visitors from sun-up to sun-down.
Many visitors to Egypt never make it to Islamic Cairo. Don’t be one of them.