Cairo, Egypt

Cairo, or al-Qahirah (meaning “the triumphant”) as it is officially known, is the capital of Egypt. It is a bustling urban center with both modern and ancient influences evident in its architecture, culture, and people. It is one of the most populous cities in Africa and one of the largest in the Islamic world. Its streets are crowded with cars, vendors, and muezzins, who call Muslims to prayer throughout the day. Cairo is a city with a long history, known for incorporating traditional and modern elements of both Western and Eastern culture. Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo served as the main stage of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011.

Landscape

Cairo is located in northern Egypt on the banks of the Nile River, just south of where the river splits into two branches and heads out to the Mediterranean Sea. The original city was built on the eastern side of the Nile and is defined by narrow avenues, crowded streets, and overflowing tenements. It is home to many ancient mosques and other reminders of Cairo’s past. The downtown area, designed in the nineteenth century and heavily inspired by Paris, has much wider streets, more open spaces, and public gardens. This section is also home to most of the city’s government buildings.

The city originally grew up around the Nile because the abundant water supply was a much-needed resource not available in the surrounding desert. More sophisticated irrigation systems have allowed the city to expand into the formerly uninhabitable desert. On the west bank of the Nile is the city of Giza, capital of the Giza Governorate, which is connected to the main part of Cairo and included in the greater Cairo metro area, as are the Nile islands of Gezira and Roda. The city has an area of about 214.2 square kilometers (83 square miles), not counting the outlying urban areas. The total metropolitan area, including outlying suburbs, measures an estimated 86,369.3 square kilometers (33,347 square miles), of which 85,153.6 square kilometers (32,878 square miles) is the Giza Governorate.

Cairo has only two seasons, with summer lasting from April or May to September. The summers are very hot, with average high temperatures ranging from 27 to 33 degrees Celsius (82 to 93 degrees Fahrenheit), but the humidity is usually low. During March and April, Cairo experiences a dry, dusty windstorm called khamaseen; the winds from this storm can reach speeds of 150 kilometers per hour (93 miles per hour).

People

The city of Cairo had a population of 22.183 million people in 2023.

Cairo is considered a regional center of the Islamic faith, with the area known as Islamic Cairo situated in the center of the city. An area of southeastern Cairo called al-Arafa, or the City of the Dead, is home to more than 500,000 Cairenes, largely as a result of poverty and urban housing problems. Al-Arafa is made up of “alternative housing” in cemeteries among mausoleums and tombs dating from the thirteenth century. The half-million residents of this area quite literally live with the dead.

Cairo is one of the world’s most densely populated cities, with 95 percent of residents occupying a mere 5 percent of the land. The population of the Cairo metro area grows by more than a million each year. This puts a tremendous strain on infrastructure and utilities, which have struggled to keep pace with the growing population.

Economy

Major industries in Cairo include publishing houses, film studios, textiles, iron and steel production, financial services, and tourism. As the center of Egyptian industry and commerce, Cairo has always been an affluent city, but the wealth is unevenly distributed. In addition, various utilities, such as phone systems and electricity grids, are sometimes ineffective in poorer areas.

Beginning in 1974, attempts were made to open Cairo up to foreign investment. More money was brought into the city, but this only exacerbated the economic disparity. Amid this economic downturn, which coincided with a population boom, Islam has seen a revival in Cairo.

Landmarks

All of the major Egyptian pyramids are in close proximity to Cairo, including the Great Pyramids of Giza. The Egyptian Museum in Cairo holds the largest collection of Egyptian antiques. The Cairo Opera House is another major attraction in the city.

The Khan el-Khalili souk, or bazaar, has been a fixture in the city’s Islamic district since the fourteenth century. Other popular street markets selling spices, perfumes, gold, silver, carpets, brass and copperware, leatherwork, glass, ceramics, fabrics, and musical instruments include Wekala al-Balaq, the Souq al-Khayamiya (tentmakers’ bazaar), and Mohammed Ali Street.

History

By the time of the Islamic conquest of 640 CE, Romans had taken over Egypt and had made Alexandria the political capital. The Muslim armies wanted a city with greater military advantage than Alexandria, so they founded al-Fustat, now part of Old Cairo, on the banks of the Nile as a garrison for Arab troops. The Arabs opened the first mosque in Africa at this new site and named it the Mosque of Amr ibn al-As, after the general who had led the conquest and later served as governor of Egypt. The Arabs reopened the Red Sea Canal, which effectively made al-Fustat a bridge between the East and the West.

In the tenth century, a Shiite leader called Ma’ad al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah came to power and sent his soldiers to capture Egypt. The city now known as Cairo was founded by al-Mu’izz’s general, Gawhar al-Siqilli, in 969 CE as the administrative capital of Egypt, and it quickly absorbed the remains of al-Fustat. Al-Siqilli also founded al-Azhar Mosque, the first one to be established in Cairo. Al-Azhar University was founded around the same time. Both the mosque and the university still exist today; the latter is the oldest educational institution in the Islamic world.

Slave-soldiers called Mamluks ruled Cairo and Egypt for almost three centuries, from 1250 to 1517, following an unsuccessful attempt by Christian crusaders to conquer the city. Cairenes had employed slaves in military and administrative positions for years. Muslim slavery was conducted in a considerably different way from the Western idea of slavery, allowing slaves to hold positions of power and to run various elements of the city’s business. The Mamluks further organized their ranks, creating a hierarchy and eventually rising to sultandom. Slave traders from the Black Sea arrived in Cairo in 1347, bringing the Black Death with them. By 1349, one-third of Cairo’s population had been killed by the plague, which claimed an estimated one thousand victims each day. The city first received independence in 1801, when Ottoman viceroy Muhammad Ali declared it the capital of an independent empire. In 1835, another plague killed 62,000 of Cairo’s 250,000 people.

In January 1977, hundreds of thousands of Cairenes took to the streets in protest of the burgeoning westernization of the city. Over a period of two days, rioters burned government buildings, demolished railroad tracks, and destroyed anything they thought symbolized the wealth and luxury they had been denied.

An earthquake in 1992 killed almost six thousand people in Cairo and destroyed thousands of homes. The local and state governments were slow to respond to the crisis, while numerous Islamist groups rushed in with aid almost immediately. This only furthered many Cairenes’ disillusionment with the government and drove some further toward radical Islam.

When the United Nations recognized Cairo as a political capital, the world took notice of the difficulties facing Egypt’s economy. A 1994 United Nations conference brought twenty thousand government officials, activists, and journalists to Cairo to address the city’s economic troubles. Nevertheless, a vast gulf still exists between the rich and the poor in Cairo.

On January 25, 2011, over fifty thousand demonstrators gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square to protest against the regime of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak. The demonstrations would become the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, which ended in Mubarak’s resignation on February 11. Throughout the revolution, Tahrir Square played host to scenes of both political violence and jubilant celebration.

Presidential elections were held in May and June 2012. Mohamed Morsi, a member of the Islamist Freedom and Justice Party and the official candidate of the Muslim Brotherhood, was declared the winner on June 24. Five months later, after Morsi issued a decree that effectively gave him unlimited powers, thousands of people, many from various liberal, secularist, or Christian organizations, gathered in the streets to protest. The decree was withdrawn in December, but the demonstrations continued, protesting Morsi’s attempts to extend his power as well as his Islamist-dominated government and the new constitution, which was heavily influenced by Islamic law.

On June 29, 2013, hundreds of thousands of protesters once again gathered in Tahrir Square to call for the president’s resignation. On July 1, the Egyptian Armed Forces gave the government forty-eight hours to accede to the protesters’ demands. Morsi refused, and two days later, the army removed him from power and suspended the constitution. Adly Mansour, the newly appointed head of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt, was declared acting president on July 4. An amended constitution was passed by referendum in January 2014, and Abdel Fattah El Sisi was elected president in May 2014. In 2015, the Egyptian government revealed plans to build a new city to replace Cairo as the capital and help ease congestion in the major city. The New Administrative Capital (NAC) was situated 45 km (28 miles) east of Cairo. Some government departments relocated there in 2023. People were moving to the new city in early 2024. However, the economy was cratering under the weight of foreign debt, some related to Sisi's borrowing, and inflation was high.

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