"Al-Misr, mother of cities" a Cairo Travel Page by TheLongTone

For so many Egyptian tour holidays Cairo is no more than a quick hello to King Tut, a whisk round the pyramids and seventeen minutes at the Khan el khalil market to top-up on tourist tat.

This is a great shame since Cairo is a mighty city, with much to see and do. My first visit I spent the best part of two weeks there and felt that I'd barely scratched the surface. In fact, on my first visit several of the important mosques that I wished to visit were closed for restorative work (so I had to return) Nevertheless I was kept busy enough.

Cairo's basic geography is like no other city that I know of. Most cities stay in one place: Cairo moves. It's locus is shaped by the Nile to the west and the Muquattam Heights to the east, Between these two constraints Cairo has steadily moved north: the Roman/Byzantine centre being what is often called 'old cairo'. The first Islamic conquerors of Egypt built their centre, Fustat, immeditely to the north: the centre was moved again by the Tulunids, who created a new centre in the area centered on the Ibn Tulun mosque. Al Quahira ('The Conqueror), from which the name Cairo is derived is the C9 Fatimid walled city to the north of Fustat. Much of Fustat was razed by a fire started by a mad caliph (allegedly) shortly after the Fatimid conquest and later most of the remander was burnt to stop it being tactically useful due to it's proximity to the citadel, which is fundamentally the creation of Salaf al-Din (Saladin) . In the nineteenth century the city spread west to the banks of the Nile (whose course is now to the west of where it used to be), in a self-conscious imitation of Haussmann's Paris and creating the area around Talaat Harb and Quasr el Nil.

I love this photo, possibly because it's not my usual kind of picture. I was actually after a shot of the Sabil-kuttub of 'Abd ar-Rahman Katkhudia (as drawn by David Roberts), which is vaguely discernable in the background. I was waiting for a tipper-truck to laboriously back out of the mosque which was being renovated opposite the school, when these lads tore noisily down the street....
I love the variety of expressions on the faces, and what I think really makes the shot is the eye-contact between me and the boy on the rearmost scooter.

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Cairo is probably the best city in the world for a non-muslim to gain an insight into Islamic architecture, since it is one of the few countries acessible to tourists which permits infidels to enter its mosques. (The great mosques of Turkey are all Ottoman: virtually all that is to be seen in Cairo antedates the Ottomans>)
Obvious highlights are the mosques of Amr Ibn al 'As, Ahmad ibn Tulun, Al Azhar, Sultan Hassan and the funerary complexes of the Northern Cemetary. (From whence the photo, of the mosque attached to Sultan Quaitbey's mausoleum). There are many others. I don't really like to see more than two or three great buildings in a day, since in my experience to do so runs the risk of them all getting horribly mixed up, and so I think there will always be something new for me to see in Cairo. Or look at again.