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Cairo: the History and the Heritage

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Cairo: the History and the Heritage 1 Cairo: The History and the Heritage The Meaning of History in Cairo Oleg Grabar The appended plans, drawing, tables, and lists of monuments or rulers as well as the reading of any book on the architecture of Cairo made clear two unique features of this extraordinary city. One is that no other city of the Muslim world possesses the wealth of architectural monuments found in Cairo, and in the world at large Rome alone matches in numbers and perhaps sur­ passes in variety the richness of Cairo. The second is that, just as those in Istanbul, Isfahan, Delhi or Samarqand, the monu­ ments of Cairo punctuate the city; they serve as inescapable focal or nodal points in one's perception and awareness of at least the urban area as it existed before the momentous physical and social changes of the nineteenth century. Yet there is a dif­ ference between Cairo and other compara­ ble "monument cities" of the Islamic world In all other cities the main monu­ ments, whatever their function, express the power and ideology of imperial dynasties, the Ottomans, the Safavids, the Mughals, the Timurids. With the partial exception of the Fatimid buildings of the late tenth and eleventh centuries, this is hardly the case in Cairo, as the Mamluks cannot and should ~ Land exi<;til1g at time oj Fatimid\' not be considered as a classical dynasty and ITd Land added b)' eal I), A ),),lIbids (1170) as the Ottoman monuments of Cairo are precisely remarkable for not having, as a B Land added /J)' late AY)'lI/Jids (1237) rule, the showiness they possess elsewhere D Land added b)' middle of 14 (ent1ll)' Nor can Cairo be considered among the typical "Islamic" cities of western Asia and Movement of the Nile River the Mediterranean. It is true, of course, Source Abu-Lughod, fig VI The Meaning of History in Cairo 2 Northern expansion of the city Courtesy of the author that Damascus, Tripoli and Aleppo show some of the same characteristics as Cairo (the cases of Jerusalem and Mekka being different because of the specific require­ ments imposed by their holiness), but these were all cities heavily influenced in their social and visual structure by Egypt. Fez, Marrakesh, Tunis, Tlemcen, Mosul, Bagh­ dad, Konya, Bursa, Isfahan or Yazd all exhibit a different relationship between urban fabric and architectural monument. Everyone of these cities contains any num­ ber of major buildings, some even striking masterpieces of Islamic architecture. What none of them possesses is, on the one hand, the continuity of major building acti­ vities over several centuries (as Cairo has from roughly 1000 until 1800) and, on the c=:J MajO! quwte1'l oj Caiu) other, the consistent exhibitionism of these _ MajO/lOads buildings, whose domes and minarets de­ fine Cairo's horizon line and whose gates and inscribed walls shape the configuration Canals, major roads and quarters of Cairo. of the living city, for instance in the de- Courtesy ofthe author 3 The Meaning of History in Cairo lineation of its streets and passageways as well as of the eternal city of the dead, for the vast cemeteries of Cairo were an integ­ ral part of the metropolis. The purpose of this essay is to raise a few questions about the significance of this Cairene peculiarity and to provoke a dis­ cussion on how to interpret it at two diffe­ rent levels. One is the level of perceiving, or reading, the city's static monuments as an integral component of the living fabric of the city. The second level is more of a query: assuming that a reasonable inter­ pretation has been proposed for the monu­ ments and therefore an adequate definition exists of the city's formal character, can and should this awareness be extended to the judgement of the modern city and be­ come part of any planning of the future city? One last preliminary note is necessary. Constraints of time for an introductory presentation and the limitations of my knowledge and of whatever detailed re­ search I have done on Cairene monuments compel me to restrict my remarks on the city before 1520. This is, I believe, legiti­ mate to the extent that the main forms and characteristics of the city were determined by the extraordinary intertwining of a Fati­ mid urban order of the eleventh century, of Ayyubid ideology of the late twelfth, and of an often studied Mamluk system from the thirteenth to the early sixteenth. The ways in which this was all done still await its historian. The first historical question posed by Cairo is why it became so uniquely different. There is no clear answer to this question, but, for the purposes of the discussion, I should like to propose the following ex­ planation. Alone among the major urban centres of the mediaeval Muslim world, Cairo was provided with a combination of incentives for investment and expression in large scale architecture. Some of these were built within its ecological setting, others were accidents of history. The main ones are: continuous sources of wealth The supply of water in Cairo. location ofpublic fountains and baths, 1798 through trade for nearly half a millenium, whatever vagaries existed in commercial Courtesy of the author The Meaning of History in Cairo 4 Cairo and its environs before 1825 Source: Coste, Pl. LXVI activities; absence of destructive invasions etc. in the West was an Egyptian one); ments) but not less original patronage of which had plagued most of western Asia availability of easily visible major monu­ striking variety. No other Muslim centre until the sixteenth century; at time shaky, ments from older civilisations, classical was provided with that many operative fac­ but usually successfully operational, in­ ones and especially ancient Egyptian ones, tors creating in Cairo both a consistent pat­ digenous mix of religious and ethnic com­ which entered the realm of myths as well as ronage and the means to invest in building. munities; consistent magnet of intellectual, served as quarries; in Mamluk times, ori­ But the possibility of architectural invest­ social, and money-making institutions and ginal presence of a class of patrons issued ment does not compel its actuality. Some­ activities which brought people from all from the military "slaves" associated to the thing else triggered building as the major over the Muslim world and, in a more con­ local bourgeoisie and ulama through the form of expression, as opposed to the trolled way, from the non-Muslim world as complex web of a legal system; in older manufacturing or collecting of objects, for well (until the growth of an imperial Istan­ times, a less well studied (except in so far instance (although both of these activities bul, the image of the Turk, the Saracen, as it is known through the Geniza docu- did take place). A partial answer to this 5 The Meaning of History in Cairo =lii -- ~~ ~ ~ ~_-_~ ~= ~ ,flir ~ ~ =~ ~ tI1~ ~ _-_~_ I:r : I :: :: I I I I I ' I I II I I I' ----i·f====rr=".:=~=====i'i!?E= I I I 'I I I : I I I 00 o ===",=====IO,rI mosquev • Mamluk sabil. ... Mamluk Mosqueofal-Aqmar, A H 51911125A D ,plan o Ottoman 6. Ottoman Source Creswell, MAE, vol 1, fig 141 wakalal' • Mamllik mad/asas • Mamllik o Ottoman o Ottoman cluding Cairo and Istanbul), its banks, in­ Bulaq location of monuments surance companies, museums and often Source' Hanna, fig 3 universities in modified neo-classical style. I am arguing, in other words, that, beyond the existence of resources and of a patron­ age, there was in Cairo, especially in second question emerges when we recall story in a by-then well established lan­ Mamluk times, a cultural self-assuredness the remarkable conservatism of Cairene guage, because the need had not arisen to and an unquestioning agreement on which architectural forms. Whereas Iran and the seek a new idiom or to say something new. forms are needed and why. It is this agree­ Turkish beyliks, not to speak of Italy, A culture at apparent peace with itself saw ment which was necessary for the expres­ embarked, from the thirteenth century on, in the proclamations of buildings the best sion of resources and patronage in on major experiments with novel and and most expressive way of reminding it­ architecture and for the conservatism of sometimes striking ideas, Cairene self of its own accepted values and, as its that expression. architecture exploited and honed, lovingly monuments copy each other, compete with Historians may well refine these generali­ each other, at times but rarely replace each and imaginatively, very traditional forms ties, point out certain exceptions to them other, always enter into a dialogue with of spatial composition and surface decora­ like the madrasa of Sultan Hassan, identify whatever preceded them. They recall, it tion: courts, porticoes, domes, iwans, Mu­ many additional motivations and explana­ qarnas, geometric interlaces, large bands seems to me, the way in which the late tions for the buildings of Cairo between of writing, and so on. The Mamluk monu­ nineteenth-century mercantile civilisation 1000 and 1500, and in general pursue the ments of Cairo tell and tell again the same of the West built, wherever it reached (in- The Meaning of History in Cairo 6 -t4 -i-i-.-:+ ~ -------- '" I I I I ~ ~ (D ,0~ u;'" 9187 • • • """""!'" . .. .. - :... -. - - - 13838- • • • •If? --. -- 304 - -- J"""'''''''' I iD .c---~ ~ I . __ ~ ___ '':::'-, ___ . _____3?;.e __or•. 'iiiO ___30:;' __.'.O.46 __ ..-.:30j' __.'.'.'" __ _ Mosque ofAhmad Ibn Tulun, A H 265/877 AD, elevation and plan Source: Creswell, EMA, vol. 2, figs 246, 247.
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