The city of Cairo has acted for an infinite time as a guardian and a center for culture, art, and beauty. It is quite famous for being the capital of Egypt, and the largest metropolitan area in Africa, The Middle East, the Arab world, and the 15th largest in the world.
Cairo (Arabic: محافظة القاهرة) is one of the 27 governorates of Egypt. Cairo city is subdivided into four Areas (manatiq) headed by a deputy governor each, and 38 Districts (ahya, sing.).
The Cairo Governorate is a special area in Egypt. It is like a state or province. Its main city, Cairo, is also the capital city of all Egypt! A governorate is a type of administrative area in Egypt. Think of it like a county or a state. Each governorate has its own leader, called a governor. They help manage the area and its people. The Cairo Governorate is located in the northeastern part of Egypt. It sits right on the famous Nile River.
The total area of the Cairo Governorate is about 3,085 square kilometers.
Many people live in the Cairo Governorate. In January 2018, there were about 9,655,000 people living there. This makes it one of the most crowded places in Egypt. Imagine almost 10 million people living in one area!
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The city of Cairo is the heart of the Cairo Governorate. It is also the national capital of Egypt. This means that important government buildings and offices are located here. Cairo is a very old city with a rich history.
Cairo is the capital of the Arab Republic of Egypt and its the largest and most important city. Also, it is the most populated city in the Arab World. On the other hand, the city of Cairo is the second in Africa and the seventeenth in the world of population.
It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world, and the Middle East. Cairo is the twelfth most populous city in the world. It has almost 21,322,750 people, according to 2021 statistics. This number of population represents 20% of Egypt’s population.
Today, Cairo city is one of the largest and most populous Arab cities and the administrative capital of Egypt. Cairo has become a major tourist destination for tourists. As it has numerous tourist sites, ancient monuments, and important cultural landmarks that represent diverse cultures from around the world.
Cairo has stood for more than 1,000 years on the same site on the banks of the Nile, primarily on the eastern shore, some 500 miles (800 km) downstream from the Aswan High Dam. Located in the northeast of the country, Cairo is the gateway to the Nile delta, where the lower Nile separates into the Rosetta and Damietta branches.
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Metropolitan Cairo is made up of the Cairo muḥāfazah (governorate) as well as other districts, some of which belong to neighbouring governorates such as Al-Jīzah and Qalūbiyyah.
Area governorate, 83 square miles (214 square km). Pop. (2006) governorate, 7,902,085; (2017) governorate, 9,539,673; urban agglom., 19,295,000.
Key Aspects of Cairo
- Government Hub: Cairo is where the main government of Egypt works.
- Culture and History: The city is full of amazing historical sites, like ancient mosques and museums.
- Economy: Cairo is a big center for business, trade, and education.
Historical Overview
The origins of modern Cairo are generally traced back to a series of settlements in the first millennium AD. Around the turn of the fourth century, as Memphis was continuing to decline in importance, the Romans established a large fortress along the east bank of the Nile. The fortress, called Babylon, was built by the Roman emperor Diocletian (r. 285-305) at the entrance of a canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea that was created earlier by Emperor Trajan (r. 98-117).
The site today remains at the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, which separated from the Roman and Byzantine churches in the late 4th century. The Muslim conquest of Byzantine Egypt was led by Amr ibn al-As from 639 to 642. Babylon Fortress was besieged in September 640 and fell in April 641. In 641 or early 642, after the surrender of Alexandria, the Egyptian capital at the time, he founded a new settlement next to Babylon Fortress.
The city, known as Fustat (Arabic: الفسطاط, romanised: al-Fusṭāṭ, lit. 'the tent'), served as a garrison town and as the new administrative capital of Egypt.
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In 750, following the overthrow of the Umayyad Caliphate by the Abbasids, the new rulers created their own settlement to the northeast of Fustat which became the new provincial capital. This was known as al-Askar (Arabic: العسكر, lit. 'the camp') as it was laid out like a military camp.
In 868, a commander of Turkic origin named Bakbak was sent to Egypt by the Abbasid Caliph al-Mu'taz to restore order after a rebellion in the country. He was accompanied by his stepson, Ahmad ibn Tulun, who became effective governor of Egypt. Between 876 and 879 Ibn Tulun built a great mosque, now known as the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, at the center of the city, next to the palace.
In 969, the Fatimid Caliphate conquered Egypt after ruling from Ifriqiya. The Fatimid Caliph al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah instructed his courtier and general Jawhar al-Saqili to establish a new fortified city northeast of Fustat and of former al-Qata'i. It took four years to build the city, initially known as al-Manṣūriyyah, which was to serve as the new capital of the caliphate. During that time, the construction of the al-Azhar Mosque was commissioned by order of the caliph, which developed into the third-oldest university in the world.
When Caliph al-Mu'izz arrived from the old Fatimid capital of Mahdia in Tunisia in 973, he gave the city its present name, Qāhirat al-Mu'izz ("The Vanquisher of al-Mu'izz"), from which the name "Cairo" (al-Qāhira) originates.
Caliph Al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah ordered Jawhar al-Siqilli to build the new capital of the Fatimid state in 969 AD. This was the year when Cairo was founded. The Caliph named it “Cairo.”
Cairo has many names throughout the ages. As it is the City of a Thousand Minarets, the Protected, and Cairo of al-Mu’izz.
Cairo is both a governorate and a city; it occupies the entire area of a single city, at the same time is simultaneously a large city that constitutes a governorate in its own right. It has 37 districts.
Cairo celebrates its national holiday on 6 July, the day Commander Jawhar al-Siqilli put the city’s foundation stone in 969 AD.
There are different opinions on the reason for naming Cairo. and when Cairo was founded. Some say that Jawhar al-Siqilli initially named the city al-Mansuriya, after the city of al-Mansuriya, which was the same name of al-Mansur Billah, the father of al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah. Others say that Jawhar al-Siqilli named the city after because he loved his father (al mansour be-llah).This name continued for 4 years.Then al-Mu’izz came to Egypt and renamed it “Cairo. He gave it this name in the hope that it would conquer the Abbasid state, which was competing with the Fatimids. Others say that he named it “Cairo” to “conquer the world,” or that it was named after the planet Mars.
In 1168 the Fatimid vizier Shawar set fire to the unfortified Fustat to prevent its potential capture by Amalric, the Crusader king of Jerusalem. While the fire did not destroy the city and it continued to exist afterward, it did mark the beginning of its decline.
A collage of Cairo's landmarks.
In 1169, Shirkuh's nephew Saladin was appointed as the new vizier of Egypt by the Fatimids and two years later he seized power from the family of the last Fatimid caliph, al-'Āḍid. As the first Sultan of Egypt, Saladin established the Ayyubid dynasty, based in Cairo, and aligned Egypt with the Sunni Abbasids, who were based in Baghdad.
In 1176, Saladin began construction on the Cairo Citadel, which was to serve as the seat of the Egyptian government until the mid-19th century. The construction of the Citadel definitively ended Fatimid-built Cairo's status as an exclusive palace-city and opened it up to common Egyptians and to foreign merchants, spurring its commercial development.
Along with the Citadel, Saladin also began the construction of a new 20-kilometre-long wall that would protect both Cairo and Fustat on their eastern side and connect them with the new Citadel.
In 1250, during the Seventh Crusade, the Ayyubid dynasty had a crisis with the death of al-Salih and power transitioned instead to the Mamluks, partly with the help of al-Salih's wife, Shajar ad-Durr, who ruled for a brief period around this time.
Cairo's political influence diminished significantly after the Ottomans defeated Sultan al-Ghuri in the Battle of Marj Dabiq in 1516 and conquered Egypt in 1517.
During the 16th and 17th centuries, Cairo still remained an important economic and cultural centre. Although no longer on the spice route, the city facilitated the transportation of Yemeni coffee and Indian textiles, primarily to Anatolia, North Africa, and the Balkans. Cairene merchants were instrumental in bringing goods to the barren Hejaz, especially during the annual hajj to Mecca.
The French occupation was short-lived as British and Ottoman forces, including a sizeable Albanian contingent, recaptured the country in 1801.
Until his death in 1848, Muhammad Ali Pasha instituted a number of social and economic reforms that earned him the title of founder of modern Egypt. However, while Muhammad Ali initiated the construction of public buildings in the city, those reforms had minimal effect on Cairo's landscape.
The British occupation was intended to be temporary, but it lasted well into the 20th century.
British troops remained in the country until 1956.
The city was devastated during the 1952 riots known as the Cairo Fire or Black Saturday, which saw the destruction of nearly 700 shops, movie theatres, casinos and hotels in downtown Cairo.
The British departed Cairo following the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, but the city's rapid growth showed no signs of abating. Seeking to accommodate the increasing population, President Gamal Abdel Nasser redeveloped Tahrir Square and the Nile Corniche, and improved the city's network of bridges and highways.
In the second half of the 20th century, Cairo continued to grow enormously in both population and area. Between 1947 and 2006, the population of Greater Cairo went from 2,986,280 to 16,292,269.
Geography and Climate
The city occupies an area of about 528 square kilometers in northern Egypt, 120 km (75 mi) west of Gulf of Suez & Suez canal, 165 km (100 mi) south of the Mediterranean Sea and lies on both banks of the Nile River near the Nile delta.
Cairo is fan-shaped, narrowest in the south, where the river valley is wedged between desert escarpments, and widest in the north, where the valley blends into the delta. Over the centuries the city expanded westward, as a receding river channel left land flood-free. In response to heightened demand, however, the city also has been elongated to the north and south and has developed an expanding annex on the Nile’s western shore.
The climate in the city of Cairo is moderate most of the year. The temperature during the summer ranges between 22°C and 34°C, but during the winter ranges between 18°C and 9°C. There are two seasons: a hot summer from May to October and a mild winter from November to April. It is also very dry, with low rainfall during the winter and high humidity levels during the summer.
A satellite image of the Cairo area.
City Layout
The organization of the metropolitan complex is understandable only in the context of the city’s history. The three oldest areas constitute densely populated poorer neighbourhoods that virtually surround a relatively Westernized downtown core. The largest of these is the medieval city built under the Fatimid dynasty (909-1171), with its pre-19th century extensions (Al-Jamāliyyah, Al-Darb al-Aḥmar, Bāb al-Shaʿriyyah, and Al-Sayyidah Zaynab toward the east and Al-Khalīfah toward the north).
Two other old quarters, Būlāq (northwest of the medieval city) and Miṣr al-Qadīmah (“Old Cairo”; to the south), served as port suburbs of Cairo before the city expanded to encompass them.
The origins of Miṣr al-Qadīmah lie with Al-Fusṭāṭ, originally founded as a military encampment in 641 by ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ. At the heart of Miṣr al-Qadīmah stands the reconstructed Mosque of ʿAmr ibn al-ʿĀṣ, as well as the many Coptic churches.
The central business district, referred to as the Wasṭ al-Balad (“city centre,” or downtown), is flanked by these older quarters.
Along the eastern edge of the metropolis stands the district of Al-Qarāfah (City of the Dead), a unique zone made up of an extensive series of cemeteries.
The northern and western peripheries of the city grew dramatically in the last two decades of the 20th century. In Giza and on the island of Al-Rawḍah, on the Nile’s western bank, are located residential quarters, the zoological and botanical gardens, an agricultural museum, and the campus of Cairo University.
Beginning in the mid-19th century, expansion toward the north led to development of the districts of Rawḍ al-Faraj, Shubrā, Sharābiyyah, Al-Qubbah, Al-ʿAbbāsiyyah, Al-Maṭariyyah, and Al-Zaytūn.
Historic Cairo
Historic Cairo is one of the exceptional cities in the world, characterized by the extraordinary survival of its architectural, artistic and urban heritage, which fully expresses its long history and the diversity of its values. Its siting at a historic crossroads of international trade routes from Europe, Asia and Africa fostered its prosperity as a political, cultural and economic capital, a destination for scholars and a stop on major pilgrimage routes.
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