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Cai·ro (kī'rō)  |
The capital and largest city of Egypt, in the northeast part of the country on the Nile River. Old Cairo was built c. 642 as a military camp; the new city was founded c. 968 by the Fatimid dynasty and reached its greatest prosperity under the Mameluke sultans (13th–16th century). Population: 7,790,000.
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A code name from Microsoft for a future operating system. The term was later used only to refer to specific features, some of which were included in Windows 2000.
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Cairo |
For more information on Cairo, visit Britannica.com.
| Columbia Encyclopedia: Cairo |
Points of Interest
Much of Cairo is modern, with wide streets. Its famed mosques, palaces, and city gates are found mostly in the older sections. The mosques of Amur (7th cent.), Ibn Tulun (876–79), Hasan (c.1356), and Qait Bay (1475) are especially noted for their bold design. Khedive Ismail's palace on Zamalik island is a notable 19th-century structure. The Mosque of Al Azhar (970) and adjoining buildings house Al Azhar Univ., considered the world's leading center of Qur'anic studies. Cairo also is the center of Coptic Christianity.
The city is the seat of the American Univ. in Cairo, Cairo Polytechnic Institute, the Higher Institute of Finance and Commerce, the College of Fine Arts, and the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts. The Univ. of Cairo is nearby, in Giza. Among Cairo's many museums, the Egyptian National Museum is especially noted for its holdings of ancient Egyptian art. The Nilometer, a graduated column dating from 716 and used to measure the river's water level, is on Roda island, where tradition says the infant Moses was found in the bulrushes.
History
Almost directly across the Nile from Cairo was Memphis, an ancient Egyptian capital. Babylon, a Roman fortress city, occupied what is now a SE section called Old Cairo. Cairo itself was founded in 969 by the Fatimid general Jauhar Al Rumi to replace nearby Al Qatai (established in the 9th cent. by an Abbasid governor of Egypt) as the capital of Egypt. In the 12th cent. Saladin ended Fatimid rule and established the Ayyubite dynasty (1171–1250). To defend the city against Crusaders, Saladin erected (c.1179) the citadel, which still stands, and extended the walls of the city, parts of which remain. Cairo prospered under the rule of the Mamluks, who added many buildings of artistic merit, but the city declined after it was conquered (1517) by the Ottoman Empire.
At the time of its capture (1798) by Napoleon Bonaparte's forces, the city had about 250,000 inhabitants. British and Turkish forces ousted the French in 1801, and Cairo was returned to Ottoman control. Under Muhammad Ali (ruled 1805–49), it became the capital of a virtually independent country and grew in commercial importance; many Europeans settled in the city. During World War II, Cairo was the Allied headquarters and supply center for the Middle East and the site (1943) of the Cairo Conference. The Arab League is headquartered in Cairo. In the late 20th cent. the city has been plagued by poverty and overcrowding, which has forced many Cairenes to settle in the City of the Dead, a vast expanse of cemeteries to the S and E; the area is not administered or serviced by the city.
Bibliography
See M. Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious (1998).
| Mideast & N. Africa Encyclopedia: Cairo |
The capital of Egypt, the largest city in the Middle East and Africa, and a major political, religious, and cultural hub for the Arab, Islamic, and African worlds.
A city with fertile hinterland and a crossroads location for river, sea, and land trade has flourished near the juncture of the Nile valley of Upper Egypt and the delta of Lower Egypt for five thousand years. In 640 C.E. the conquering Muslim Arabs founded al-Fustat (now Old Cairo to Westerners), which superseded the Babylon of the Romans and its predecessor across the river, the Memphis of the pharaohs. In 969 the invading Fatimids founded al-Qahira (the Victorious), and Cairo acquired its current name and resumed its ancient role as an imperial center. (In Arabic, Misr has long been used interchangeably for both Egypt and Cairo.) The Fatimids established the renowned mosque-university alAzhar, and Salah al-Din (Saladin) of the Ayyubid dynasty built the hilltop Citadel, which remained the seat of power until the mid-nineteenth century.
Its population weakened by epidemics and the ruling Mamluks' internecine warfare, Cairo fell to the Ottomans in 1517. By the seventeenth century the Cape of Good Hope route had deprived Cairo (reduced once more to the status of a provincial city) of much of its spice trade. Europeans no longer spoke with awe of the city Egyptians called the Mother of the World. In 1798 the cartographers of Napoléon Bonaparte's military expedition found a city of a quarter of a million people, half of the population of Cairo at its fourteenth-century peak. The narrow, irregular streets of the preindustrial city served pedestrians, riders, and pack animals well enough, and balconies provided welcome shade. Gates that closed at night and dead-end alleys marked off city quarters, which were defined mainly along religious, ethnic, and occupational lines. Waqf endowments supported mosques, schools, Sufi lodges, baths, fountains, and hospitals.
The military, economic, administrative, and educational reforms introduced during Muhammad Ali's reign (1805 - 1848) left few external marks on Cairo, and the city's population, checked by epidemics and competition from burgeoning Alexandria,
remained stagnant until the middle of the century. After 1850, however, the population grew because of lower mortality rates, an influx of people from the countryside, and the immigration of European and Levantine entrepreneurs. The Alexandria-Cairo Railroad and the Suez Canal, whose construction was completed respectively in 1855 and 1869, quickened the pace of life in Cairo. The city's share of Egypt's total population, which had dipped from 5.8 percent in 1800 to a low of 4.7 percent in 1865 (when Alexandria was in full bloom), rose to 6.9 percent in 1897. Today it accounts for over a quarter of the total population of Egypt.
Under Muhammad Ali's grandson Ismaʿil (r. 1863 - 1879) and the British occupation (1882 - 1922), the unused space between Cairo and its river ports Bulaq and Old Cairo was developed. Inspired by the municipal improvements effected in Paris by Baron Georges Haussmann and determined to impress the Europeans at the ceremonies celebrating the Suez Canal's completion, Ismaʿil instructed engineer Ali Mubarak to equip the suburb Ismaʿiliyya with Parisian-style boulevards, traffic hubs, gardens, palaces, and even an opera house. Ismaʿil had two boulevards for vehicle traffic cut through the old city before the bankruptcy of Egypt intervened and cost him the throne. European connoisseurs of "Oriental Cairo" persuaded his successor to found the Comité de Preservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe (1881), and preservationists still fight to save some monuments and neighborhoods in Cairo from relentless overpopulation, decay, and demolition for urban renewal.
Under the British, Cairo's European population (30,000, or 6 percent of the city's population in 1897) dominated big business and filled the fashionable new quarters of Heliopolis, Garden City, Maʿadi, and Zamalek with their Mediterranean-style villas. European concessionaires developed the
water, gas, electricity, telephone, and tramway services, and built the bridges across the Nile. Bridges made accessible the first artery to the West Bank in 1872. By 1914 the access provided by additional bridges to more arteries to the West Bank and to the islands of Rawda and Gazira resulted in rapid development. Between 1896 and 1914 electric tramways (soon replaced by motor vehicles) revolutionized transportation within the city and made possible the swift development of suburbs to the northeast (Abbasiyya, Heliopolis), the north (Shubra), and the west (Rawda, Zamalik, Giza).
Between 1922 and 1952 the domination by Europeans of economic and political life in Egypt ebbed. In 1949 the closing of the Mixed Courts put an end to special privileges for Westerners, and Cairo belatedly acquired a municipal government that was distinct from the national ministries. Life in the old city deteriorated (see the masterful portrayal of this time by novelist Najib Mahfuz). Well-to-do Egyptians left for the suburbs, Egyptians from rural parts of the country crowded in, and the overflow of tens of thousands of inhabitants spilled over into the cemeteries of the City of the Dead.
| Cairo Population Estimates | |
| Sources: Abu-Lughod, Janet. Cairo: 1,001 Years of the City Victorious. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971; World Almanac 2004. New York: World Almanac Education Group. | |
| 1798: | 264,000 |
| 1846: | 257,000 |
| 1897: | 590,000 |
| 1927: | 1,065,000 |
| 1947: | 2,048,000 |
| 1960: | 3,416,000 |
| 1970: | 7,000,000 |
| 2003: | 9,600,000 |
Under Gamal Abdel Nasser (r. 1952 - 1970) there was an acceleration of both planned and unplanned urban development. Private utility and transport concessions reverted to the state, waqf reform freed land for development, a new airport opened, and a revamped road network briefly alleviated some of the traffic congestion. The Corniche exposed Cairo to the river, and Maydan al-Tahrir became the city center. The Nile Hilton and the new Shepheard's were the first of many luxury hotels built to cater to the expanding tourist trade. Heavy industry was set up in suburban Hilwan and Shubra al-Khayma. The 1956 Master Plan for Cairo recommended that the city limit its population to 3.5 million (a maximum that had already been exceeded) and advocated planned satellite communities and development on desert rather than on agricultural land. The resulting Nasr City - with government offices, housing blocks, schools, a 100,000-seat stadium, and a new campus for al-Azhar - was a success, but Muqattam City, perched high on the desert cliffs, was not.
Since 1970 the Hilwan - al-Marj metro line has been opened in Cairo, sewer and telephone systems have been upgraded, and more satellite cities have been built in the desert (Sadat City, 10th Ramadan, 6th October, al-Ubur, 15th May). The population crush nevertheless threatens to dwarf such efforts. The runaway sprawl into agricultural lands in the delta and Giza continues while the problem-plagued desert satellite cities sit half empty and a purple cloud of polluted air regularly hangs over Cairo. Opportunities for jobs, schooling, housing, and healthcare are better in Cairo than in the teeming countryside, and people from rural areas keep pouring in. Shanty towns proliferate. One out of every four Egyptians lives in this Third-World megalopolis of seventeen million people.
Cairo remains the cultural capital of the Arab world. Its assets include al-Azhar and four modern universities, twenty-odd museums, a major movie industry and playhouses, a radio and television industry, bookshops and publishing houses, al-Ahram and other periodicals, a zoo, a new opera house, the headquarters of the Arab League, and the Academy of the Arabic Language.
Bibliography
Abu-Lughod, Janet. Cairo: 1,001 Years of the City Victorious. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971.
André, Raymond. Cairo. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000.
Francy, Claire E. Cairo: The Practical Guide, 2003. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 2002.
Rodenbeck, Max. Cairo: The City Victorious. New York: Knopf, 1999.
Seton-Williams, Veronica; Stocks, Peter; and Seton-Williams, M. V. The Blue Guide Egypt, 3d edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 1993.
Staffa, Susan Jane. Conquest and Fusion: The Social Evolution ofCairo, A.D. 642 - 1850. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1977.
Stewart, Desmond. Great Cairo: Mother of the World, 3d edition. Cairo: American University in Cairo, 1996.
— DONALD MALCOLM REID
| Geography: Cairo |
The capital of Egypt and largest city in the country; a major port just south of the Nile Delta in the northeast corner of Africa.
| Weather: Cairo, Egypt |
| Dialing Code: The telephone dialing code for: Cairo, Egypt |
The country code is: 20
The city code is: 2
| Wikipedia: Cairo |
| Cairo القـــاهــرة al-Qāhira |
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  Cairo
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| Coordinates: 30°03′N 31°22′E / 30.05°N 31.367°E | |
| Country |  Egypt |
|---|---|
| Governorate | Cairo Governorate |
| Government | |
| - Governor | Dr. Abdul Azim Wazir |
| Area | |
| - City | 214 km2 (82.6 sq mi) |
| Population (2006) | |
| - City | 6,758,581 |
| - Density | 31,582/km2 (81,797/sq mi) |
| - Urban | 17,285,000 |
| Time zone | EET (UTC+2) |
| - Summer (DST) | EEST (UTC+3) |
| Website | www.cairo.gov.eg |
Cairo (Arabic: القاهرة al-Qāhira) is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab World.[1] Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a center of the region's political and cultural life. Even before Cairo was established in the tenth century, the land composing the present-day city was the site of national capitals whose remnants remain visible in parts of Old Cairo. Cairo is also associated with Ancient Egypt due to its proximity to the Great Sphinx and the pyramids in nearby Giza.
Egyptians today often refer to Cairo as Miṣr (Arabic: مصر), the Arabic name for Egypt itself, emphasizing the city's continued role in Egyptian influence. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab World, as well as the world's second-oldest institution of higher learning, al-Azhar University. Many international media, businesses, and organizations have regional headquarters in the city, and the Arab League has been based in Cairo for most of its existence.
With a population of 6.8 million[2] spread over 214 km2 (83 sq mi), Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt as well as one of the most densely-populated cities in the world. With an additional ten million inhabitants just outside the city, Cairo resides at the center of the largest metropolitan area in Africa and the eleventh-largest urban area in the world.[1] Cairo, like many large cities in developing countries, suffers from high levels of pollution and traffic, but its metro – currently the only on the African continent – also ranks among the fifteen busiest in the world,[3] with over 700 million passenger rides annually.
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The name Al-Qahirah has been said to mean "the Victorious". The origin of Al-Qahirah. The legacy of the name evolved into “Qahirat Al Adaa” meaning “the subduer of the enemies”. This title was given to the city as many armies were destroyed in attempts to invade Cairo or defeated elsewhere by troops sent from the settlement.
Cairo was founded in 969 AD as the royal enclosure for the Fatimid caliphs, while the actual economic and administrative capital was in nearby Fustat. Modern Cairo encompasses Fustat, as well as other previous capitals — Al-Askar and Al-Qatta'i. Fustat was established by Arab military commander 'Amr ibn al-'As following the conquest of Egypt in 641, and took over as the capital which previously was located in Alexandria. Al-Askar, located in what is now Old Cairo, was the capital of Egypt from 750 to 868. Ahmad ibn Tulun established Al-Qatta'i as the new capital of Egypt, and remained the capital until 905, when the Fustat once again became the capital. After Fustat was destroyed in 1168/1169 to prevent its capture by the Crusaders, the administrative capital of Egypt moved to Cairo, where it has remained ever since. It took four years for the General Jawhar Al Sikilli (the Sicilian) to build Cairo and for the Fatimid Calif Al Muizz to leave his old Mahdia in Tunisia and settle in the new Capital of Fatimids in Egypt.
After Memphis, Heliopolis, Giza and the Byzantine fortress of Babylon-in-Egypt, Fustat was a new city built as a military garrison for Arab troops. It was the closest central location to Arabia that was accessible to the Nile. Fustat became a regional center of Islam during the Umayyad period. It was where the Umayyad ruler, Marwan II, made his last stand against the Abbasids.
Later, during the Fatimid era, Al-Qahira (Cairo) was officially founded in 969 as an imperial capital just to the north of Fustat. Over the centuries, Cairo grew to absorb other local cities such as Fustat, but the year 969 is considered the "founding year" of the modern city.[4] Cairo soon became a center of learning, with the library of Cairo containing as many as two million books.[5]
In 1250, the slave soldiers or Mamluks seized Egypt and ruled from their capital at Cairo until 1517, when they were defeated by the Ottomans. The city’s population was decimated by plagues, including the outbreak of the Black Death in 1348.[6] By the 16th century, Cairo had high-rise apartment buildings where the two lower floors were for commercial and storage purposes and the multiple stories above them were rented out to tenants.[7]
Napoleon's French army briefly occupied Egypt from 1798 to 1801, after which an Albanian officer in the Ottoman army named Muhammad Ali Pasha made Cairo the capital of an independent empire that lasted from 1805 to 1882. The city then came under British control until Egypt attained independence in 1922. Under the British, Cairo's European population (30,000, or 6% of the city's population in 1897) dominated big business.[8]
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Cairo is located on the banks and islands of the Nile River in the north of Egypt, immediately south of the point where the river leaves its desert-bound valley and breaks into two branches into the low-lying Nile Delta region.
Referring to Cairo often means Greater Cairo, which is composed of Cairo governate, part of Giza and Qaluobyia governates. Since May 2008 Greater Cairo has been divided into 4 new governates: Cairo, Helwan, Giza Governorate and the 6th of October Governorate. Cairo University is in Giza governate, while Cairo governate has the Ain Shams University.
The oldest part of the city is east of the river. The city gradually spreads west, engulfing the agricultural lands next to the Nile. These western areas, built on the model of Paris by Khedive Ismail in the mid-19th century, are marked by wide boulevards, public gardens, and open spaces. The older eastern section of the city is very different: having grown up haphazardly over the centuries, it is filled with small lanes and crowded tenements. While western Cairo is dominated by tater government buildings and modern architecture, the eastern half is filled with hundreds of ancient mosques.
Extensive water systems have also allowed the city to expand east into the desert. Bridges link the Nile islands of Gezira and Roda, where many government buildings are located and government officials live. Bridges also cross the Nile attaching the city to the suburbs of Giza and Imbabah (part of the Cairo conurbation).
West of Giza, in the desert, is part of the ancient necropolis of Memphis on the Giza plateau, with its three large pyramids, including the Great Pyramid of Giza. Approximately 11 miles (18 km) to the south of modern Cairo is the site of the ancient Egyptian city of Memphis and adjoining necropolis of Saqqara. These cities were Cairo's ancient predecessors, when Cairo was still in this approximate geographical location.
In Cairo, and along the Nile River Valley, the climate is a mixture between mediterranean climate and desert climate (BWh according to the system), but often with high humidity due to the river valley's effects. Wind storms can be frequent, bringing Saharan dust into the city during the months of March and April. High temperatures in winter range from 13°C to 19°C, while night-time lows drop to below 8°C, often to 5°C. In summer, the highs rarely surpass 40°C, and lows drop to about 20°C. Rainfall is sparse, but sudden showers do cause harsh flooding. In a city near Cairo called New Cairo, the temperatures often drop below zero during winter. New Cairo's weather is generally cooler than that of Cairo due to its high altitude.
 Weather averages for Cairo  |
|||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Month | Jan | Feb | Mar | Apr | May | Jun | Jul | Aug | Sep | Oct | Nov | Dec | Year |
| Average high °C (°F) | 18 (64) |
20 (68) |
22 (72) |
27 (81) |
31 (88) |
33 (91) |
33 (91) |
33 (91) |
32 (90) |
29 (84) |
23 (73) |
19 (66) |
27 (81) |
| Daily Mean °C (°F) | 13 (55) |
15 (59) |
17 (63) |
21 (70) |
25 (77) |
27 (81) |
28 (82) |
27 (81) |
26 (79) |
23 (73) |
19 (66) |
15 (59) |
21 (70) |
| Average low °C (°F) | 9 (48) |
10 (50) |
12 (54) |
15 (59) |
17 (63) |
21 (70) |
22 (72) |
22 (72) |
20 (68) |
18 (64) |
14 (57) |
10 (50) |
16 (61) |
| Precipitation cm (inches) | 0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
0 (0) |
2 (0.8) |
| Source: Weatherbase[9] | |||||||||||||
Cairo, as well as neighbouring Giza, has been established as Egypt's main center for medical treatment, and despite some exceptions, has the most advanced level of medical care in the country. Cairo's hospitals include As-Salam International Hospital- Corniche El Nile; Maadi (Egypt's largest private hospital with 350 beds), Ain Shams University Hospital, Dar El Fouad Hospital, as well as Qasr El Ainy General Hospital.
Cairo has long been the hub of education and educational services not only for Egypt but also for the whole Arab world. Today, Cairo is the center for many government offices governing the Egyptian educational system, has the largest number of educational schools, and higher learning institutes among other cities and governorates of Egypt.
Some of the International Schools found in Cairo include:
Universities in Cairo:
Transportation in Cairo comprises an extensive road network, rail system, subway system, and maritime services. Road transport is facilitated by personal vehicles, taxi cabs, privately-owned public buses, and microbuses. Cairo, specifically Ramses Square, is the center of almost the entire Egyptian transportation network.[citation needed]
The subway system, officially called "Metro (مترو)", is a fast and efficient way of getting around Cairo. It can get very crowded during rush hour. Two train cars (the fourth and fifth ones) are reserved for women only, although women may ride in any car they want.
An extensive road network connects Cairo with other Egyptian cities and villages. There is a new Ring Road that surrounds the outskirts of the city, with exits that reach outer Cairo districts. There are flyovers, and bridges such as the Sixth of October bridge that, when it doesn't experience heavy traffic, allows fast[citation needed] means of transportation from one side of the city to the other.
Cairo traffic is known to be overwhelming and overcrowded.[10] Traffic moves at a relatively fluid pace. Drivers tend to be aggressive, but are more courteous at intersections, taking turns going, with police aiding in traffic control of some congested areas.[citation needed]
Football is the most popular sport in Egypt, and Cairo has a number of sporting teams that compete in national and regional leagues. The best known teams are Al-Ahly and El Zamalek, whose annual football tournament is perhaps the most watched sports event in Egypt as well as the African and Arabian World. Both teams are known as the "rivals" of Egyptian football, and are the first and the second champions in the African continent and the Arab World. Both teams play their home games at Cairo International Stadium or Naser Stadium , which is Cairo's, Egypt's, Africa's and the Middle East's largest stadium and one of the largest in the world.
The Cairo International Stadium was built in 1960 and its multi-purpose sports complex that houses the main football stadium, an indoor stadium, several satellite fields that held several regional, continental and global games, including the African Games, U17 Football World Championship and was one of the stadiums scheduled that hosted the 2006 African Nations Cup which was played on January, 2006, which Egypt won its title for the record number of five times in African Continental Competition's history.
Cairo failed at the applicant stage when bidding for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, which was hosted in Beijing, China. However, Cairo will host the Pan-Arab Games this year and next year.
There are several other sports teams in the city that participate in several sports including el Gezira Sporting Club, el Shams Club, el Seid Club, Heliopolis Club and several smaller clubs, but the biggest clubs in Egypt (not in area but in sports) are Al Zamalek & Al Ahly. They have the two biggest football teams in Egypt.
Most of the sports federations of the country are also located in the city suburbs, including the Egyptian Football Association. The headquarters of the Confederation of African Football (CAF) was previously located in Cairo, before relocating to its new headquarters in 6 October City, a small city away from Cairo's crowded districts.
On October 2008, the Egyptian Rugby Federation was officially formed and granted membership into the International Rugby Board.
Over the ages, and as far back as four thousand years, Egypt stood as the land where civilizations have always met.[citation needed] The Pharaohs together with the Greeks and the Romans have left their imprints here. Muslims from the Arabian Peninsula, led by Amr ibn al-A'as, introduced Islam into Egypt. Khedive Mohammad Ali, with his Albanian family roots, put Egypt on the road to modernity. If anything, the cultural mix in this country is natural, given its heritage. Egypt can be likened to an open museum with monuments of the different historical periods on display everywhere.
President Mubarak inaugurated the new Cairo Opera House of the Egyptian National Cultural Centers on October 10, 1988, seventeen years after the Royal Opera House had been destroyed by fire. The National Cultural Center was built with the help of JICA, the Japan International Co-operation Agency and stands as a prominent feature for the Japanese-Egyptian co-operation and the friendship between these two nations.
Egypt is proud to be the only state in the region which built two opera houses within a century.
The Khedivial Opera House or Royal Opera House was the original opera house in Cairo, Egypt. It was dedicated on November 1, 1869 and burned down on October 28, 1971. After the original opera house was destroyed, Cairo was without an opera house for nearly two decades until the opening of the new Cairo Opera House in 1988.
Egypt's love of the arts in general can be traced back to the rich heritage bequeathed by the Pharaohs. In modern times, Egypt has enjoyed a strong cinematic tradition since the art of filmmaking was first developed, early in the 20th century. A natural progression from the active theatre scene of the time, cinema rapidly evolved into a vast motion picture industry. This together with the much older music tradition, raised Egypt to become the cultural capital of the Arab world.
For more than 500 years of recorded history, Egypt has fascinated the West and inspired its creative talents from play writer William Shakespeare, poet and dramatist John Dryden, and novelist and poet Lawrence Durrell to film producer Cecil B. de Mille. Since the silent movies Hollywood has been capitalising on the box-office returns that come from combining Egyptian stories with visual effects.
Egypt has also been a fount of Arabic literature, producing some of the 20th century's greatest Arab writers such as Taha Hussein and Tawfiq al-Hakim to Nobel Laureate, novelist Naguib Mahfouz. Each of them has written for the cinema.
With these credentials, it was clear that Cairo should aim to hold an international film festival. This dream came true on Monday August 16, 1976, when the first Cairo International Film Festival was launched by the Egyptian Association of Film Writers and Critics, headed by Kamal El-Mallakh. The Association ran the festival for seven years until 1983.
This achievement lead to the President of the Festival again contacting the FIAPF with the request that a competition should be included at the 1991 Festival. The request was granted.
In 1998, the Festival took place under the presidency of one of Egypt's leading actors, Hussein Fahmy, who was appointed by the Minister of Culture, Farouk Hosni, after the death of Saad El-Din Wahba.
Four years later, the journalist and writer Cherif El-Shoubashy became president.
For 29 years, the home of the Pyramids and Nile has hosted international superstars like Nicolas Cage , John Malkovich, Morgan Freeman, Bud Spencer, Gina Lollobrigida, Ornella Mutti, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Victoria Abril, Elizabeth Taylor, Shashi Kapoor, Alain Delon, Greta Scacchi, Catherine Deneuve, Peter O'toole, Christopher Lee, Irene Pappas, Marcello Mastroianni, Kurt Russell, Goldie Hawn, Alicia Silverstone and Omar Sharif, as well as great directors like Robert Wise, Elia Kazan, Vanessa Redgrave, Oliver Stone, Roland Joffe, Carlos Saura, Ismail Merchant and Michel Angelo Antonioni, in an annual celebration and examination of the state of cinema in the world today.
The Cairo Geniza is an accumulation of almost 200,000 Jewish manuscripts that were found in the genizah of the Ben Ezra synagogue (built 882) of Fostat, Egypt (now Old Cairo), the Basatin cemetery east of Old Cairo, and a number of old documents that were bought in Cairo in the later 19th century. These documents were written from about 870 to as late as 1880 AD and have now been archived in various American and European libraries. The Taylor-Schechter collection in the University of Cambridge runs to 140,000 manuscripts; there are a further 40,000 manuscripts at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.
Inaugurated in May 2005, Al-Azhar Park is located adjacent to Cairo's Darb al-Ahmar district. The Park was created by the Historic Cities Support Programme (HCSP) of the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), an entity of the Aga Khan Development Network, and was a gift to Cairo from His Highness the Aga Khan. It is interesting to note that the city of Cairo was founded in the year 969 by the Fatimid Imam-Caliphs who were ancestors of the Aga Khan.[11]
During the development of the park, a part of the 12th century Ayyubid wall was discovered and subsequently restored. The wall had originally been built by Salah al-Din al-Ayubbi as a defence against the crusaders. The discovery prompted additional research into the nearby historic neighborhood of Darb al-Ahmar, and eventually led to a major project encompassing the restoration of several mosques, palaces and historic houses. The HCSP also established social and economic programs to provide a wide range of assistance for local residents.[12]
The 6th of October city-based Media Production city ( MPC) is the biggest ever built information and media complex, which, together with the Egyptian media satellites "Nilesat 101", "Nilesat 102", will allow Egypt to step into the new world of the 21st century. Thereby, Cairo will be well-qualified and well-equipped to maintain its pioneering role in the field of satellite television
Cairo is also in every respect the center of Egypt, as it has been almost since its founding in 969 AD. 15% of all Egyptians live there. The majority of the nation's commerce is generated there, or passes through the city. The great majority of publishing houses and media outlets and nearly all film studios are there, as are half of the nation's hospital beds and universities. This has fueled rapid construction in the city—one building in five is less than 15 years old.
This astonishing growth until recently surged well ahead of city services. Homes, roads, electricity, telephone and sewer services were all suddenly in short supply. Analysts trying to grasp the magnitude of the change coined terms like "hyper-urbanization".
The Museum of Egyptian Antiquities, known commonly as the Egyptian Museum, is home to the most extensive collection of ancient Egyptian antiquities in the world. It has 136,000 items on display, with many more hundreds of thousands in its basement storerooms
Khan el-Khalili is for many the most entertaining part of Cairo. It is an ancient shopping area, nothing less, but some of the shops have also their own little factories or workshops.
The suq (which is the Arabic name for bazaar, or market) dates back to 1382, when Emir Djaharks el-Khalili built a big caravanserai (or khan) right here. A caravanserai was a sort of hotel for traders, and usually the focal point for economic activity for any surrounding area. This caravanserai is still there, you just ask for the narrow street of Sikka Khan el-Khalili and Badestan.
The part of Cairo that contains Coptic Cairo and Fostat, which contains the Coptic Museum, Babylon Fortress, Hanging Church, the Greek Church of St. George, many other Coptic churches, the Ben Ezra Synagogue and Amr ibn al-'As Mosque.
The Cairo Tower is a free-standing concrete TV tower in Cairo. It stands in the Zamalek district on Gezira Island in the Nile River, in the city centre. At 187 meters, it is 43 meters higher than the Great Pyramid of Giza, which stands some 15 km to the southwest.
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Cairo is a rapidly expanding city, which has led to many environmental problems. The air pollution in Cairo is a matter of serious concern. Greater Cairo's volatile aromatic hydrocarbon levels are higher than many other similar cities.[13] Air quality measurements in Cairo have also been recording dangerous levels of lead, carbon dioxide, sulphur dioxide, and suspended particulate matter concentrations due to decades of unregulated vehicle emissions, urban industrial operations, and chaff and trash burning. There are over 2,000,000 cars on the streets of Cairo, 60% of which are over 10 years old, and therefore lack modern emission cutting features like catalytic converters. Cairo has a very poor dispersion factor because of lack of rain and its layout of tall buildings and narrow streets, which create a bowl effect. A mysterious black cloud (as Egyptians refer to it) appears over Cairo every fall and causes serious respiratory diseases and eye irritations for the city's citizens. Tourists who are not familiar with such high levels of pollution must take extra care.[14]
Cairo also has many unregistered lead and copper smelters which heavily pollute the city. The results of this has been a permanent haze over the city with particulate matter in the air reaching over three times normal levels. It is estimated that 10,000 to 25,000 people a year in Cairo die due to air pollution-related diseases. Lead has been shown to cause harm to the central nervous system and neurotoxicity particularly in children.[15] In 1995, the first environmental acts were introduced and the situation has seen some improvement with 36 air monitoring stations and emissions tests on cars. 20,000 buses have also been commissioned to the city to improve congestion levels, which are very high.
The city also suffers from a high level of land pollution. Cairo produces 10,000 tons of rubbish each day, 4,000 tons of which is not collected or managed. This once again is a huge health hazard and the Egyptian Government is looking for ways to combat this. The Cairo Cleaning and Beautification Agency was founded to collect and recycle the rubbish; however, they also work with the Zabbaleen (or Zabaleen), a community that has been collecting and recycling Cairo's rubbish since the turn of the 20th century and live in an area known locally as Manshiyat naser.[16] Both are working together to pick up as much rubbish as possible within the city limits, though it remains a pressing problem.
The city also suffers from water pollution as the sewer system tends to fail and overflow. On occasion, sewage has escaped onto the streets to create a health hazard. This problem is hoped to be solved by a new sewer system funded by the European Union, which could cope with the demand of the city. The dangerously high levels of mercury in the city's water system has global health officials concerned over related health risks. There is also more concern about environmental issues among Egyptians than before. There is now general awareness and some projects are laid down to help make the public aware of the importance of clean environment.
Cairo is twinned with:
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Learning resources from WikiversityCoordinates: 30°03′29″N 31°13′44″E / 30.058°N 31.229°E
| Preceded by Fustat |
Capital of Egypt since 1169 |
Succeeded by n/a |
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| Translations: Cairo |
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