What is the name of the city of the dead? City of the Dead (Cairo) - Wikiwand City of the Dead (Cairo). Period of the Arab conquest of Egypt
One day, when I was relaxingly studying Google.Earth, lazily moving the mouse from Angola to the Cook Islands, and from Nakhodka to Madeira, I noticed something that I thought about for at least six months. In Cairo, where I had been several times and thought that I had visited everything possible, I now discovered a completely new object called Jaheen Alkhalawatee. And I got excited about the idea of going there. The matter was aggravated by the fact that I could absolutely not find anything on the Internet about this place, which resembled a hybrid of a palace and a mosque, and was located on the slopes of Mount Muqattam, in the eastern part of Cairo. Finding myself in this city on December 17, 2009, I set out to find this temple of dreams -
And the task was not easy. Not a single living soul, from taxi drivers to imams of a number of mosques, knew anything about the existence of such a place. We spent half a day driving around Cairo in a taxi, but found nothing. We climbed Mukattam and searched there, and were driven out by the soldiers guarding the air defense base on the top of the mountain. We infiltrated the city of the dead, but failure awaited us there too. It's time to despair, but this is not in my rules. The picture I saw on the Internet did not let me sleep peacefully, and on the last day of the trip, after seeing my companion at the airport (the girl had left for Moscow), I set off with triple persistence to look for this very place. And now I decided to do it on foot, so as not to accidentally pass it while driving a car. A 20(!) kilometer journey across all of Cairo awaited me, but I was mentally prepared for it.
Experts will ask - why bother looking for this structure, if on the map it is clearly indicated in the city of the dead in the south-eastern part of Cairo? The answer is simple - the person who posted this photo put it in the wrong place. And when we got there for the first time by taxi, we were sadly convinced of this. The task was to cover long kilometers, winding along the southern and northern city dead in order to visually recognize what is captured in the photo.
After escorting my companion to the airport bus 356, which departs from a small stop behind the Cairo Museum for only 1 (one!) pound, I went to the Maspero boat dock, opposite the Nile Hilton hotel. From there, water buses depart every hour, traveling both up and down the Nile. Read more about Cairo's water buses on the TourEgypt website (eng). This is a wonderful walk if you have a couple of hours to spare. The walk costs only 2 pounds, and you ride along the river for about an hour, sailing under all the bridges, making a circle past the island of Jazeera, where the tower of the Sofitel hotel is. Surprisingly, I didn’t meet a single tourist, but only families of Egyptians relaxing on their day off. Unfortunately, tourists simply do not reach these cheap municipal water buses- they are simply torn apart by street hustlers (harassers), dragging them into a felucca with a cruise along the Nile along the exact same route as River tram, but at a price 30-50 times more expensive, that is, 50-100 pounds per person.
So, after a ride along the Nile, I landed on the west bank of the river, in Giza, opposite the zoo and Cairo University. Love this area, located away from the crowds of central Cairo. The audience is completely different, no street pests, cleaner and more pleasant. I walked around the university campus. Very, very interesting. Both the buildings themselves and the students leading normal student life. I had a snack in one of the local canteens for students, which is called remembering myself in their years. Funny!
After breakfast at the university, I went to the nearby zoo, but, being an animal lover, I could not stay there for long - the conditions for keeping the unfortunate pets were too spartan. In addition, the zoo has been turned into a kind of amusement park and fast food. It feels like it’s not a zoo at all, but a kind of recreation park for working people of the lower classes, based on the amount of garbage lying everywhere. Therefore, having crossed the Nile towards the island of Roda, I went deep into the city -
Cairo - a city of contrasts
Still, sometimes you are amazed at how close wealth and chic are to poverty and despair in the countries of Africa and the Middle East. It seems like you just crossed the bridge over the Nile, it’s a 5-minute walk. But from decent Giza with its university town, parks and civilized high-rises, you find yourself in an absolutely poor part of the city. The slums are so depressing that I didn’t take pictures of them, just as I didn’t find any color in people peeing on ancient aqueduct homeless people, or sheep skins dumped in the middle of the street, rotting in the hot sun. Do you know, there are such connoisseurs of naturalism who professionally photograph sketches from the life of an ordinary Cairo citizen with a million photo effects? Perhaps I’m a prude, and I don’t see the charm in workers who pee en masse on ancient graves and monuments. As well as a completely naked legless beggar tearing apart abandoned skins with oozing blood is also not positive, although the poor fellow is simply cold at night. Meanwhile, you will see such pictures when heading east along the ancient An-Nasr aqueduct, which stretches several kilometers from Roda Island almost to the Citadel.
Not without relief, I got to the Cairo ring highway with 4 lanes in each direction and tried to cross it - unsuccessfully. The traffic is so dense that crossing to the opposite side seems suicidal. None pedestrian bridges There were no traffic lights either. Without exaggeration, it took about 30 minutes before I managed to run across the highway, and only because there was an accident and all the traffic got stuck in a dense traffic jam.
And here I am in the southern part of the city of the dead. A gloomy place, I must say, especially if you are alone and it starts to get dark. It feels like you're in the computer game Doom. Remember this one? When you rush through tunnels and different monsters jump out at you? I experienced approximately the same thing in this giant cemetery. Not only do you not know where to go - there are monotonous crypts around you and you can’t see how and where to go next, but there are also a lot of stray dogs and beggars reaching out to you from the next crypt. I understand that there is no mysticism in this, and we are talking about poor people, but still, when you are tense and definitely lost, everything is seen in a darker light.
For almost two hours I climbed among the graves and family crypts, and eventually I was tired to such an extent that I stopped being afraid of anything. And a bunch of local idiot kids who decided to play rock throwing with a tourist and hit me in the leg got their due in full. I not only turned out to be more accurate than them, but also went on the offensive, caught one of the fleeing people and gave him a powerful kick under the butt, which caused him to fly forward with acceleration, as if he had a turbine implanted in him. The children ran away screaming and didn’t bother me anymore. In general, Egypt became the third country where I had to fight with local youth with stones. The first episode was in Israel, in East Jerusalem. Then - in Morocco, in Ouarzazate, and now here, in Cairo.
And lo and behold, I saw what I had been looking for all day!
Then he walked closer, hoping to get there in order to photograph the city of the dead from there -
Unfortunately, I didn’t have time to go upstairs. It was getting dark, there was no time, and walking through the slums in the dark did not seem safe.
A little something nice at last
In order to expel the darkness and dust of ancient crypts from my soul, I went to the elegant Cairo district of Roxy, which is not far from international airport. This is the richest of Cairo's neighborhoods, with a mass beautiful villas, with beautiful colonial architecture, and a very nice, unobtrusive aura, which is sorely lacking in the city center. Meanwhile, it was getting very dark, and the camera was starting to run out of light, for which I apologize -
The secret is revealed!
The secret of this mysterious mosque has been revealed, for which thanks to Misha (aka
The City of the Dead (Qarafa) is one of the largest necropolises in the world. It is located on the outskirts of Cairo at the foot of the Mokattam Mountains. Cemeteries have existed here since the 12th century. and began to expand from the 15th century; the oldest tombs date back to this period. The shapes of the tombs are very different: some are simple stone tombstones, others are real mausoleums, erected to shelter the remains of emirs and sultans. But these are exceptions. The majority are small one- or two-room houses with gardens. About 50 years ago, low-income residents of Cairo and surrounding regions began to settle in the cemetery. Currently, between 50 and 500 thousand people live in the City of the Dead. The exact figure is not known even to the authorities.
In the foreground (see two photographs below) are the graves of poor people. And wealthier people are buried in the tomb houses. It is in such houses that the population of the City of the Dead lives.
View of the City of the Dead from the Citadel of Salah ad-Din:
In the first forty minutes of the walk, nothing reminded us of people’s lives, except for the garbage that is everywhere in Cairo:
Then signs of life began to appear:
Quite often you can see campaign posters of local parliamentary candidates.
Children walk near the graves:
Someone carefully made a fence around the trees, but the garbage is not removed:
There are taxis in the City of the Dead:
When the authorities realized that the cemetery was inhabited by a huge number of people, water supply, electricity were installed, and schools were built. No one is going to resettle people. The housing problem in Cairo is much more acute than in Moscow.
The luxurious tombs of emirs and sultans are gradually being destroyed:
While getting ready for a trip and looking at photos of Cairo on the Internet, back in Moscow I saw and wanted to visit a dilapidated mosque right in the middle of a steep mountain slope. The hotel managers, who, by the way, were very skeptical about my trips to bad areas, did not give me any information. I had to look for this mosque on my own.
The search did not take much time - I saw the mosque from the high walls of the Citadel, got into a taxi and after a 10-minute drive along the King Khaled highway through the City of the Dead I was not far from my goal.
It was impossible to go further by car, and I didn’t know how to approach the mosque, which, as it turned out, was called the Mosque Amir Al-Guyush (1085). A local teenager of about fifteen volunteered to accompany me for a reasonable fee. The road again went through the cemetery.
And here we are at the foot of the mountain. The mosque is only about 200 meters away on a rather steep slope. I told my guide that I wanted to try to climb the mountain. He didn't keep himself waiting. Lightly dressed, wearing simple slippers, he quickly covered the 50 meters of steep ascent. With a bag slung over my shoulder, containing two cameras, a bottle of water and sundry odds and ends, I began my clumsy ascent. As a result, after about 15 minutes I was hopelessly stuck. After laughing, the guide helped me down, and I decided to leave conquering the mountain until the next trip.
View from the Citadel. On the right in the background is the Amir El-Ghiyush Mosque. In the foreground is another colorful area of Cairo - Scavenger City. There will be a next post about him.
P.S.
If anyone managed to climb the mountain and visit inside the Amir El-Ghiyush Mosque, please post photos and send a link. Thank you in advance!
Shooting from 2010. A significant part of Cairo - almost a third of the area - is occupied by old cemeteries. People live in these cemeteries, right in the crypts converted into houses. Tens of thousands of illegal immigrants who came to Cairo from the provinces to work. The crypts belong to old and wealthy families, who are forced to hire invaders as “guards.” Illegal immigrants are paid little money so that the burials are not disturbed. The inhabitants of the crypts do not like to be photographed: they can throw a stone at a persistent tourist with a camera.
Cats, what would you do without them?!
View of the cemetery from the viaduct.
Fashionable youth live in the crypts. Even university students.
There is no water or sewerage in the crypts. To go to the toilet you need to go to the next “block”.
The cemetery is quiet and relatively clean, unlike many other areas of Cairo. Almost an elite area.
Local residents, even children, turn away as soon as they see the camera.
Adults don't like to be filmed either.
They also sell here.
Products are delivered by bicycle “from the city”.
This man is repairing and decorating the crypt he occupied. And the kids help him.
The Souq Al Goma Friday market also takes place at the cemetery. Here they sell and buy real garbage collected by city scavengers during the week. Despite such a dubious product, some come to the market by carriage. So life in a cemetery also has its own chic.
This city combines both a modern metropolis and ancient civilization, and the largest economy in Africa with Asia and Europe combined. Past, present and future.
Today the site - Let's dream together, will tell you why Cairo is called the “city of the dead”, what is the population of densely populated city Africa, how the luxury of the East coexists with poverty on the outskirts...
Cairo's unusually favorable location, right in the Nile River Delta, allowed the small village to become the center of the Islamic world in a very short period of time.
Trade in herbs and spices, ceramics and jewelry made it possible for the city to develop thanks to the countless profits that flowed like a river. Mosques and palaces were built at an incredible pace, and the well-being of citizens grew.
Cairo has become a city of “a thousand minarets.” But things are not so rosy at the moment.
Population of Cairo
The population of the Egyptian capital is more than 20 million and the housing shortage forces many to look for new places to live or at least for recreation.
Recycling in Europe and Cairo
On the outskirts of Cairo, the “City of the Dead” stretches for four and a half kilometers. The old Arab cemetery has turned into a necropolis.
Entire families huddle around burial grounds, necropolis tombs, mausoleums and tombs. Almost 500,000 people chose this part of the city to live.
City of the Dead Cairo - El Arafa
Far from the bustle of the capital, entire generations of Egyptians exist among the tombstones. The dead and the living live measured life good neighbors.
The locals are called “the guardians of the graves.”
The cemetery allows them to make a living. For cleaning and guarding graves and digging new ones for burials.
For the poor deceased, it costs $19 to dig a grave, and up to $60 for wealthy clients. This allows gravediggers to support large families. Women are engaged in cleaning and cleaning the burials attached to them. Children play and grow up there.
Garbage bags rot in the sun awaiting sorting
The empty tomb serves as a bedroom or living room for an entire family. The mausoleum provides shelter from the heat and sun, and it is convenient to dry clothes on the tombstone.
On Fridays it is customary to visit buried relatives. This is additional income for hairdressers from the City of the Dead. Getting a haircut and shaving for Friday prayers is sacred.
Making money by collecting and sorting waste is the easiest way to make a living
Milk, fruits and vegetables are sold among the graves in the morning. The city within the city lives and develops at its own unhurried rhythm.
The authorities have made attempts to move people from these slums to new houses on the outskirts, but the population is so large that this solution has now become almost impossible to implement.
Cairo - "diamond button"
This unusual name it received thanks to its favorable location. The beginning of the Nile River, the delta, made it possible to combine industry, agriculture and manufacturing in Egypt.
Create unified trading and transport routes– the main point. The closure of the delta has acquired the associative name of the “diamond button”.
Cairo - the city of scavengers
Once you move a little south, you find yourself in the garbage collectors' quarter. This is in the Zabela medina area. Making money by collecting and sorting waste is the easiest way to make a living and a chance to earn extra money. The state encourages residents in every possible way to buy recycled waste.
Cairo produces more than 15,000 tons of solid waste every day. Of these, 60% are sorted and 40% remain in landfills and streets.
Children collect and recycle plastic bottles and paper
Children rush home from school to earn money and pocket money by sorting garbage.
There are special kiosks everywhere with signs indicating what waste is accepted where. The waste is then compacted and sent to factories for reuse or recycling.
This area is not only a place where waste is sorted, but also just a residential area. With its own shops, cafes, pharmacies and hairdressers. Like everywhere else, people live and work close to home.
And on the side of the road there are piles of waste: bags of garbage rotting in the sun, waiting to be sorted. Children climb on them and rummage through the waste, hoping to find remnants of fabric or cardboard. Even used diapers can become a source of income: pieces of cotton wool will be used...
Are you still complaining about your job?
And in the Zabela region, people are happy about the opportunity to earn money. They are happy to take pictures with tourists, children enjoy candy and gifts. Laundry is dried over the mountains with garbage, goats live and graze on the roofs (because there is nowhere else) and life goes on as usual.
Life in contrasts despite everything...
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Egypt is famous not only for its ancient buildings. Many interesting buildings date back to the Islamic period. Among them, special attention can be paid to the huge number of mosques and mausoleums in Cairo that have come down to us from the Mamluk period (XIII-XVI centuries).
Mamluks are units consisting of slaves of Caucasian and Turkic origin. In Egypt, the beginning of the formation of such units dates back to the reign of Sultan Malik Saleh. The Mamluks were stationed on the island of Roda on the river. In Arabic the river is called “bahr”, which is why the first dynasty of Mamluk sultans is called the Bahrite Mamluks.
The time of the Mamluks is a time of endless feudal war, chaos and changes in power. On average, each sultan occupied the throne for only five years. Of course, each of them wanted to leave a mark on the history and architecture of the city, so this period left a special mark among the architectural monuments.
At this time Cairo becomes large shopping center and getting richer every day. This is due to the past crusades and European interest in Egyptian goods, in particular spices. In addition, at this time Cairo begins to actively use as a transhipment point between the countries of the East and Europe.
At the same time, the first buildings of the famous cemetery - the City of the Dead - appeared in the northeast of Cairo. After the first tombstone of Badr al-Gamali appeared here, the area began to grow and attract more and more attention. Many of these structures have not reached our times intact, but there are still more than 50 objects here.
The main peak of construction occurred in the 15th century. All mausoleums are different, and, depending on the time of construction, have different architectural designs. Early buildings are more squat, while later ones, on the contrary, look slender and elevated. But there are also similar points - all mausoleums are square in plan, slightly elongated and decorated with a dome. You can also highlight the abundance of windows and doorways. It may seem to some that the mausoleums themselves have a rather meager appearance, so it is worth looking at them as a complete ensemble.
