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Egypt
September 2003
A three week journey around Egypt. I wrote a full account of the trip, to record both the memories I want to keep and the historic facts I want to remember.

Part 8: Islamic Cairo
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Cairo
Our last day in Egypt was to be a long one, because our plane wasn't leaving until 3AM at night. Danny and I spent the whole day running around Cairo, visiting a lot of islamic monuments. I'll start with some history to help put these monuments in context.
History of islamic Egypt
Egypt was conquered by the Arabs in 641. It was ruled from Damascus by the Omayyad dynasty until 750, after that from Baghdad by the Abbasid dynasty. In 969 Egypt became independent under the Fatimid dynasty. In 1171 Salah al-Din, the famous Saladin who fought off the crucaders, seized power and created a new dynasty.

In 1250 the Mamelukes took power. They were a class of slaves, mostly of Turkish origin, who were given freedom after a career in the army. In 1260, when the Mongols attacked Egypt after conquering Persia, Baghdad and Damascus, the Mameluke armies were the first to defeat them, and later they beat them twice more. The Mamelukes would rule Egypt until 1517. Many monuments date from this period and have a distinct Mameluke style.

In 1517 Egypt was conquered by the Turks and became part of the Ottoman empire, although the Mamelukes remained very influential. Napoleon fought them when he occupied Egypt from 1798 to 1800. A few years later Mohammed Ali, an Albanian serving in the Turkish army, seized power, fought off a British attack and ended the Mamelukes' influence by exterminating them. He ruled Egypt until 1849 and laid the foundations of the modern Egyptian state.

Mohammed Ali and his successors carried the title khedive, which means viceroy, as Egypt was formally still part of the Ottoman empire. In reality the British gained influence until Egypt was a British colony in all but name. In 1922 it finally gained formal independence, though British forces kept meddling in Egyptian affairs.

In 1952 a coup d'etat by Nasser made Egypt the republic it is today. Nasser died in 1970, and his successor Sadat was murdered in 1981. Sadat's successor Mubarak still rules Egypt today.

The Mosque of Sultan Hassan and the Al-Rifai Mosque
Sultan Hassan was one of the first Mameluke sultans. His mosque was completed in 1256 and is considered to be the most outstanding islamic monument in Egypt. The al-Rifai mosque, which stands right next to it, mimics its Mameluke style but is much more recent: it was commissioned by the khedives in 1869 and completed in 1911. The khedives were buried here, as was the expelled Shah of Persia in 1980.

I'd spotted these two adjacent monuments from the Citadel during my first day in Cairo, but hadn't been able to visit them then. They were the most beautiful buildings I saw in Cairo, so we started our day here, checking out both mosques from nearby and visiting the Sultan Hassan mosque.


The City of the Dead
The City of the Dead was a cemetary on which the Mameluke sultans built their monumental tombs, and on which refugees from war zones are now living (cfr. part 1 of this report). I returned here with Danny, and this time it was a completely different experience. The first time I'd felt like an intruder, now after three weeks in Egypt I felt perfectly at ease.
The Mosque of Ibn Tulun
Ibn Tulun was appointed governor of Egypt by the Abbasid dynasty, but in 870 he declared Egypt independent and started his own dynasty, which ruled Egypt until the Abbasids regained power in 905. The mosque he commissioned was completed in 878 and is the oldest mosque in Egypt.

When we'd finally found the mosque, in the middle of a maze of small streets, Friday prayers had just begun, so we explored the neighbourhood first. While checking out a nearby 12th century mosque, a guy at the entrance said we could go inside and watch people pray in the small central hall, so we did. While standing there we tried to picture christians in Europe inviting two guys in Arabic dress into their church to watch them pray, but found it hard to imagine.

Later while sitting on the street behind the Ibn Tulun mosque, eating something we'd bought in a bakery, a group of children gathered around us and tried talking to us. We were the local event of the day. One of the kids gave me an Egyptian coin as a souvenir. Coins are hardly used anymore in Egypt, so this was only the second coin I saw.
When we got back to the Ibn Tulun mosque prayers were over and the guards let us in. It is a classic open mosque surrounded by galleries. The 40m high spiraling minaret was being restaurated so we couldn't climb it.
El Masidin
After visiting the Ibn Tulun mosque we headed to a long street that cuts through the oldest part of Cairo and that is called El Madasin according to an Egyptian photographer we met there. I'd explored the first part of it on my first day here, now I wanted to see it completely. We'd spend the rest of the day walking through it south to north, checking out all the monuments along the way.

The Al-Azhar Mosque
The Al-Azhar Mosque was founded in 970, when Egypt had just become independent again for the first time in 1000 years, and is the most important in Egypt. The university that is attached to it is the oldest university in the world and the most important center of islamic theology, with 90000 students from all over the islamic world studying here.



The Madrasas of Qalawun, Al-Nasir Mohammed and Barquq
Standing next to each other on El Masadin are the madrasas (islamic schools) of the three Mameluke sultans Qalawun (1279-1290), al-Nasir Muhammad (1293-1340) and Barquq (1382-1399). All of them include a mosque and a mausoleum.

The buildings were closed for restauration, but while we were looking at them on the street we got approached by a worker who offered to show us a madrasa for 15 pounds. We were only interested in climbing a minaret though, and after much negotiating he agreed to let us climb one for 5 pounds.

This became the funnest and most exciting part of the day. First he took us into al-Nasir Muhammad's madrasa, which has a gothic gate that was plundered from a crucader's church in Israel. We went up a stairwell and walked over the madrasa's roof onto the roof of Barquq's madrasa, where we entered and climbed the minaret. All the while we had to walk on planks and climb through the scaffolding the buildings were wrapped in, fun!
In the minaret the worker didn't want us to take pictures with scaffolding on it. We figured he didn't want any photographic evidence of us having been here during the restauration, but on the way down we sneaked some pictures.


The Al-Hakim Mosque and the Northern Wall
A part of old Cairo's northern city wall is still intact, and against it lies the Al-Hakim mosque which dates from 1002. Some guy tried to sell us a ticket to enter, but being experienced Egypt travelers now we just ignored him and walked in.
Shopping in the Soukh
When it got too dark for sightseeing we started shopping. We wanted to buy waterpipes and silver, and since the street we spent all afternoon traversing is full of shops we didn't have to go far. We were going to do this quick and then go to the Cairo Tower to get a nice view on Cairo by night, but we ended up haggling all evening.

Danny got a nice waterpipe for a good price (35 pounds = 5 euro). I didn't want to buy one because I don't really like smoking it anyway, but a bit further a guy offered a small waterpipe for 10 pounds (1.5 euro) and that was too cheap to resist.

Then the silver. Danny wanted to buy matching necklaces for himself and his girlfriend. We found a silver shop which could make custom designs in its own workshop, and spent over two hours argueing with the cleric and the smith about the size, the design and the price.

I drew a design of what Danny wanted on paper. We were gonna spell the names of him and his girlfriend in hieroglyphs (very common), vertically, on both halves of a medaillon (very uncommon). Since he wanted small medaillons, I put some of the hieroglyphs next to each other, but the smith refused to make it that way because it's ridiculous and the ancient Egyptians never did that and noone would be able to read it. I said I'd read a lot about Egyptian history and knew that they put hieroglyphs next to each other even in vertical sequences; he said he was an Egyptian and knew more about it than me and that they did not do that. While argueing I found, in his own shop, a necklace with Cleopatra's name in hieroglyphs, some of them next to each other just like I had said, and it was so sweet to show it to him :)

Anyway, in the end we'd agreed on the size of the medaillons, on the design and on the price, but we didn't know yet what the Arabic letters on the back of the medaillons meant. It turned out they meant "Allah is the only God" and "Mohammed is his only prophet". These are really not things that a non-muslim wants on the back of a medaillon for his girlfriend, and they didn't have blank medaillons to work with, so after hours of argueing the whole deal was off :)

We spent a few more hours walking around all the silver shops, comparing prices, using one shop's price to get a lower price in the next shop, etc, until the whole neighbourhood knew us. Embarassing behaviour if you think about how low the prices are anyway, but that's how you become after three weeks in Egypt during which you have to haggle about everything. I normally hate haggling but now I was enjoying it like a sport. In the end Danny bought necklaces of Isis and Osiris (the love birds of the Egyptian pantheon) and I got one of an ankh with a scarabee in it.

Sailing home
Close to midnight we hurried back to the hotel, only to discover that Egypt had switched to winter time this day and it was actually only 23h yet. We could have haggled longer :)

I took a shower, spent my last pounds on food and drinks, and talked to Salma on the phone a last time. Our plane departed at 3am; after switching planes we arrived in Brussels at 10AM. Damn cold!






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