Cairo

• 1. Introduction

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  Cairo is titled "the city of a thousand minarets," a name earned by its sheer density of Islamic architecture. More than 9.8 million people live within the city itself. Step back to the wider Greater Cairo metropolitan area and the figure climbs past 22 million, one of the largest in the world by population. This is the capital of Egypt, the heart of the Cairo Governorate, and the anchor of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world, and the Middle East.

  But the present skyline rests on something far older. Areas of what became Cairo were inhabited from pre-dynastic and early-dynastic ancient Egypt, roughly 6000 years ago. The Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis all sit within the city's reach. How did a place that began as scattered ancient settlements grow into a key global city? Why was it named "the Vanquisher"? And how does a metropolis of more than 22 million people carry six thousand years of history on the same patch of ground beside the Nile? Those are the questions this documentary will follow.

• 2. The Vanquisher

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  The name Cairo comes from the Arabic al-Qahirah, meaning 'the Vanquisher' or 'the Conqueror.' The Fatimid Caliph al-Mu'izz gave it that name when the city became the capital of the Fatimid dynasty. Its full formal name was al-Qahirah al-Mu'izziyyah, meaning 'the Vanquisher of al-Mu'izz.'

  There is a celestial explanation too. The planet Mars, known in Arabic by names such as an-Najm al-Qahir, 'the Conquering Star,' was said to be rising at the moment the city was founded. The name may have drawn from that omen in the sky.

  Egyptians themselves often call the city Masr, the Egyptian Arabic name for Egypt as a whole. Using the country's own name for the city signals how central Cairo is to the nation. Coptic tradition preserves still other names. The form Tikeshromi appears in a 1211 text, The Martyrdom of John of Phanijoit, read by some as a calque meaning 'man breaker,' echoing al-Qahirah. Another Coptic name, Lioui, descends from the Greek name of Heliopolis, a thread that ties the modern city straight back to one of its ancient predecessors.

• 3. Layers Beneath The City

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  Memphis was the capital of Egypt during the Old Kingdom, sitting a short distance south west of present-day Cairo. Heliopolis, a major religious centre, stood in what are now the districts of Matariya and Ain Shams. The Persian invasions of 525 BC and 343 BC largely destroyed Heliopolis, and it was partly abandoned by the late first century BC.

  Around the turn of the fourth century, the Romans built a large fortress on the east bank of the Nile. The trading post of Babylon, first mentioned in 50 BC, became a fortress built by the emperor Diocletian at the entrance of a canal connecting the Nile to the Red Sea. That canal had been created earlier by Emperor Trajan. The settlement mattered enough that its bishop, Cyrus, took part in the Second Council of Ephesus in 449.

  The Byzantine-Sassanian War between 602 and 628 brought hardship, and much of the population likely fled to the countryside. The site remains the nucleus of the Coptic Orthodox community, which separated from the Roman and Byzantine churches in the late 4th century. Cairo's oldest surviving churches, including the Church of Saint Barbara and the Church of Saints Sergius and Bacchus, stand inside those old fortress walls in what is now Old Cairo.

• 4. Cities Before The Capital

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  The Muslim conquest of Byzantine Egypt was led by Amr ibn al-As from 639 to 642, and Babylon Fortress fell in April 641. Next to that fortress he founded a new settlement called Fustat, a garrison town and the new administrative capital. Historians such as Janet Abu-Lughod and Andre Raymond trace the genesis of present-day Cairo to the foundation of Fustat. Amr also founded a mosque, now known as the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-As, the oldest mosque in Egypt and Africa.

  In 750, after the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate, the new rulers built al-Askar to the northeast of Fustat, laid out like a military camp. In 861, on the orders of the Abbasid Caliph al-Mutawakkil, a Nilometer was built on Roda Island near Fustat. Its basic structure still survives, making it the oldest preserved Islamic-era structure in the city.

  In 868 a commander of Turkic origin named Bakbak was sent to Egypt, accompanied by his stepson Ahmad ibn Tulun. Ibn Tulun gathered an army, wealth, and influence, becoming de facto independent ruler of both Egypt and Syria by 878. In 870 he founded his own capital, al-Qata'i, with a palace, a parade ground, a hospital, and an aqueduct. Between 876 and 879 he built the great Mosque of Ibn Tulun. In 905 the Abbasids razed al-Qata'i to the ground, sparing only that mosque, which still stands today.

• 5. The Fatimids And Their Walls

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  In 969, the Fatimid Caliphate conquered Egypt after ruling from Ifriqiya. The Caliph al-Mu'izz instructed his general Jawhar al-Saqili to build a new fortified city northeast of Fustat. It took four years to construct, initially known as al-Mansuriyyah. During that time the al-Azhar Mosque was commissioned, growing into the third-oldest university in the world. When al-Mu'izz arrived from Mahdia in Tunisia in 973, he gave the city its present name.

  The caliphs lived in a vast and lavish palace complex at the heart of the city. For most of this era Cairo stayed a relatively exclusive royal city. During the tenure of Badr al-Gamali as vizier, from 1073 to 1094, those restrictions loosened, and richer families from Fustat were allowed to move in. Between 1087 and 1092 Badr al-Gamali rebuilt the city walls in stone and constructed the gates of Bab al-Futuh, Bab al-Nasr, and Bab Zuweila, which still stand.

  Fustat reached its peak in size and prosperity during this period. Historical sources report multi-story communal residences, some as high as seven stories, housing between 200 and 350 people. In 1168 the Fatimid vizier Shawar set fire to the unfortified Fustat to keep it from the Crusader king Amalric of Jerusalem. The fire marked the beginning of Fustat's decline, and migration flowed instead toward the former palace-city of Cairo.

• 6. Saladin And The Mamluk Builders

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  In 1169 Shirkuh's nephew Saladin was appointed vizier of Egypt by the Fatimids. Two years later he seized power from the last Fatimid caliph, al-'Adid, founding the Ayyubid dynasty and aligning Egypt with the Sunni Abbasids in Baghdad. In 1176 he began the Cairo Citadel, which served as the seat of Egyptian government until the mid-19th century. He also started a 20-kilometre-long wall to protect both Cairo and Fustat and connect them to the new Citadel.

  In 1250, during the Seventh Crusade, power passed from the Ayyubids to the Mamluks, soldiers purchased as young slaves and raised to serve in the sultan's army. Al-Salih's wife, Shajar ad-Durr, ruled briefly around this time. Between 1250 and 1517 the throne passed from one mamluk to another, a succession often violent and chaotic. The Mamluks repelled the Mongols, most famously at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, and eliminated the last Crusader states in the Levant.

  Under Sultan al-Nasir Muhammad, Cairo reached its apogee in population and wealth. By 1340 the city held close to half a million people, making it the largest city west of China. When the traveller Ibn Battuta first came in 1326 he described it as the principal district of Egypt. Returning in 1348, he found the Black Death ravaging the city, citing reports of thousands of deaths per day. The plague struck Cairo more than fifty times between 1348 and 1517. Even so, the Madrasa-Mosque of Sultan Hasan, the largest Mamluk-era religious monument, rose in this very period.

• 7. Ottoman Province To Modern Capital

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  The Ottomans defeated Sultan al-Ghuri at the Battle of Marj Dabiq in 1516 and conquered Egypt in 1517. Ruling from Constantinople, Sultan Selim I reduced Egypt to a province with Cairo as its capital. The city still facilitated the transport of Yemeni coffee and Indian textiles, and al-Azhar University attained the predominance among Islamic schools that it holds today. The first printing press of the Middle East, printing in Hebrew, was established in Cairo around 1557.

  When Napoleon arrived in 1798 the city's population was less than 300,000, forty percent below its mid-14th-century height. British and Ottoman forces recaptured the country in 1801, and an Albanian named Muhammad Ali Pasha rose to become viceroy of Egypt in 1805. Until his death in 1848 he instituted reforms that earned him the title of founder of modern Egypt. Under Isma'il Pasha, who ruled from 1863 to 1879, Cairo drew inspiration from Paris, with maidans and wide avenues now composing Downtown Cairo.

  Nationalists staged large-scale demonstrations in 1919, leading to Egypt's independence in 1922. Between 1882 and 1937 the population more than tripled, from 347,000 to 1.3 million, and the area grew from 10 to 163 square kilometres. The 1952 riots known as the Cairo Fire destroyed nearly 700 shops, theatres, casinos and hotels downtown. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, President Gamal Abdel Nasser redeveloped Tahrir Square and the Nile Corniche and improved the city's bridges and highways.

• 8. Growth, Revolution, And A New Capital

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  Between 1947 and 2006 the population of Greater Cairo went from 2,986,280 to 16,292,269. That explosion drove the rise of informal housing, known as 'ashwa'iyyat, built without official planning. By 2009 over 63% of Greater Cairo's population lived in informal neighbourhoods, even though these occupied only 17% of the total area. The economist David Sims noted such housing offers affordable accommodation and vibrant communities, but suffers from government neglect and overcrowding.

  Madinat Nasr, a huge government-sponsored expansion to the east, officially began in 1959. In 1979 the government established the New Urban Communities Authority to direct new towns on desert land, and that same year the historic districts of Cairo were listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. In 1992 an earthquake caused 545 deaths, injured 6,512, and left around 50,000 people homeless.

  Tahrir Square became the focal point of the 2011 Egyptian revolution against President Hosni Mubarak. More than 50,000 protesters first occupied the square on the 25th of January. The uprising was mainly non-violent civil resistance, though at least 846 people were killed and 6,000 injured. On the 11th of February Mubarak resigned. In March 2015, under President el-Sisi, plans were announced for a new planned city further east, intended to serve as the New Administrative Capital of Egypt, the next chapter in a story of cities built beside cities along the same stretch of the Nile.