Download PDF | Doris Behrens-Abouseif - Islamic Architecture In Cairo_ An Introduction (1996).
192 Pages
PREFACE
As this book is in the first place an introduction, the bibliography does not include unpublished materials such as waqf deeds, though they might be referred to in the text. For the same reason unpublished theses, of which the universities of Cairo hold a large number of interest to this subject, have not been cited. Some buildings are dealt with only in the first, general part and have not been studied individually, such as the sabils of the Ottoman period or the buildings of cAbd al-Rahman Katkhuda. To locate the monuments studied in this book, their index numbers are indicated in the list of Contents and, with the help of the Survey Map of the Islamic Monuments of Cairo, these will guide the reader to the sites.
The photographs, unless otherwise indicated, are by Mr. Muhammad Yusuf, chief photographer at al-Ahram newspaper, and Mr. Martin Huth. A few are by the author. The plans that accompany the text are the work of either K.A.C. Creswell or the "Committee for the Preservation of the Islamic Monuments of Cairo", whose material is now in the Department of Antiquities. Drawings published in The Mosques of Egypt, Ministry of Waqfs, Cairo 1949, have been used among the illustrations, as well as drawings made by Mr. Vilmos Sipos.
INTRODUCTION , THE CITY
Cairo's architectural monuments rank among humanity's great achievements. Recognizing that their preservation is a matter of importance to the whole world, UNESCO has listed the Egyptian capital as one of the "Cities of Human Heritage." Such recognition is well justified, for few cities on earth display such a dense concentration of historic architectural treasures as does Cairo. This concentration reflects the political situation of Islamic Egypt, which never had another capital outside the space occupied by the city we now call Cairo. Historians describe a series of capital cities—al-Fustat, alcAskar, al-Qata^ic - and al-Qahira—but all of these were within sight of one another and eventually became a single city. Cairo has been the uninterrupted center of power in Egypt since the year 641. Continuous, centralized power in one area distinguishes Egypt from other Islamic nations such as Syria, Iraq, Anatolia, Andalusia, and Persia, where different cities vied for supremacy in different epochs, sometimes simultaneously.
Muslim Egypt was ruled from a single site, the area between the mosque of cAmr in the south and Bab al-Nasr and Bab al-Futuh to the north. Outside this area very few medieval buildings of interest have survived, while within it, a large number of Egypt's medieval and post-medieval monuments still stand, witnesses to more than eleven centuries of history. AL-FUSTAT, AL-CASKAR, AL-QATA> I C What we today call Cairo, or al-Qahira, is an agglomeration of four cities founded within the area. The name al-Qahira did not exist until the last of these was created in 969 as capital of Egypt under the Fatimids. Before this city came a succession of capitals beginning with al-Fustat (641), the Abbasid foundation of al-cAskar (750), and the Tulunid establishment of alQata>ic (870).
Al-Fustat was founded as the capital of Egypt just after the Arab conquest of Egypt. Its location was a strategic decision by the Caliph cUmar Ibn al-Khattab in Medina, for although Alexandria was capital of Egypt at the time of the conquest, the Caliph preferred to settle his troops in an area less remote from the Arabian Peninsula. cAmr Ibn al-cAs, commander of the Caliph's troops in Egypt, thus abandoned his plans to settle in the former capital on the Mediterranean. The new capital, at the apex of the Nile Delta, was strategically situated near the Roman fortress town of Babylon.
This site, at the junction of Upper and Lower Egypt, allowed easy communication with the Arabian Peninsula without crossing the Nile and its Delta branches. cAmr Ibn al-cAs redug the ancient canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea, further facilitating communication with the Caliphate in the Hejaz. AlFustat soon eclipsed Alexandria as the commercial and industrial center of Egypt, receiving goods from Upper and Lower Egypt and from the Mediterranean at its Nile port. In the ninth century, however, the Khallj or canal connecting the Nile with the Red Sea was partially filled in, and all that was left was a pond southeast of the Delta called Birkat al-Hajj, the first station on the caravan road to Mecca. Al-Fustat was typical of the garrison cities established in the early days of the Arab conquests. Like Kufa and Basra in Iraq and Qayrawan in Tunisia, it was an unplanned agglomeration that later crystallized into true urban form. At the center of al-Fustat was the mosque of cAmr, a simple construction for the religious needs of the troops and, adjacent to it, the commander's house. The mosque overlooked the Nile, whose channel was much closer to it than it is now. AlFustat was originally divided into distinct quarters occupied by the various tribes of the conquering army.
This garrison gradually developed into a large town engulfing the town of Babylon around the Roman fortress. Al-Fustat acquired its first satellite city after the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyad Caliphate of Damascus in 750 and established their new capital at Baghdad. In order to reinforce their grip on the Egyptian province, the new rulers immediately sent troops and founded a new capital, al-cAskar ("the soldiers"), with a new mosque and governor's palace, to the northeast of al-Fustat. Despite the foundation of this satellite city, al-Fustat continued for some time to be the administrative and commercial center. In the following period, the two communities of al-Fustat and al-cAskar fused into a larger city designated simply as al-Fustat, stretching to the Nile in the west and to the foot of the Muqattam hill to the east and north.
The Great Mosque of al-cAskar had already disappeared in the Middle Ages, and MaqrizI, the Egyptian historian of the early fifteenth century, mentions it only briefly. Following the precedent set by the Abbasids in founding al-cAskar, later dynasties created for themselves new seats of power, each farther to the northeast, farther inland, and each more grandiose than the last. Ahmad Ibn Tulun, sent to Egypt in 868 as the Abbasid Caliph's governor, soon asserted his independence, founding a new ruling dynasty (868-905) and a new capital, al-Qata°ic ("the wards"), northeast of the Fustat-al-cAskar complex. The new city, standing on higher ground than al-cAskar, on the hill called Jabal Yashkur, the area today including the mosque of Ibn Tulun and the foot of the Citadel, was remote from the commercial and industrial center of al-Fustat and its busy port. It was celebrated as a magnificent pleasure city, especially under the reign of Ibn Tulun's son Khumarawayh. Ibn Tulun constructed a grand palace with vast gardens and a menagerie, as well as a hippodrome for horse races, polo, and other chivalric games.
The hippodrome had a special triple gate, where Ibn Tulun entered alone through the middle arch flanked by his soldiers marching through the side arches. The Gate of Lions, another of the hippodrome's entrances, was surmounted by two lions in stucco and a belvedere or gallery for the ruler. Ibn Tulun's son Khumarawayh embellished the works of his father in many ways. He furnished one of his belvederes, the Golden House, with statues of women painted and adorned with jewelry, representing his slaves and singers. Khumarawayh took special care of the garden of rare flowers and trees. Tree trunks were coated with gilded copper from which pipes trickled water into canals and fountains to irrigate the garden, and nearby was an aviary with singing birds. Most remarkable was a pool of mercury, where Khumarawayh, an insomniac, lay on an air mattress trying to rock himself to sleep.
The entire complex, with its gardens, huge stables and menagerie of wild animals, did not overlook the Nile but rather the Birkat al-Fil, a large pond connected to the Khalij. In the surrounding area, luxury markets soon sprang up to serve the tastes of officers and notables. The Tulunid age with all its luxurious trappings came to an end in 905 when the Abbasid troops once again marched on Egypt, this time to reestablish order and replace the dynasty whose sovereigns had lived so sumptuously. During this campaign, the entire city of al-Qata^ic was razed to the ground except for Ibn Tulun's aqueduct and his mosque, the oldest mosque in Egypt surviving in its original form.
AL-QAHIRA
The fourth palatial satellite city was born with the conquest of Egypt by the Fatimids, an Ismac ili Shlc a dynasty originating in North Africa. The fourth Fatimid Caliph, al-Muc izz li-Din Allah, with his general Jawhar al-Siqilli, overthrew the Ikhshidids who had ruled Egypt between 934 and 969. Egypt's status rose with that of its conquerors; it became the seat of a Caliphate. Jawhar accordingly began construction on the walls which were to enclose the new caliphal residence. AlMuc izz first named the site al-Mansuriyya after his father, the Caliph al-Mansur, but four years later renamed it al-Qahira (The Victorious) after al-Qahir, the planet Mars, in ascendance when the signal was given to break ground for the new capital.
The new construction was completed in 971, with quarters for the various ethnic groups composing the Fatimid army: Greeks, other Europeans, Armenians, Berbers, Sudanese, and Turks. Facing a huge esplanade for ceremonial activities, the palace complex of the Caliph stood midway along the artery that cut the city into two unequal parts on an approximate north-south axis. The residences occupied the heart of the new imperial city into which the Caliph al-Muc izz made his triumphal entry in 974.
THE Two CITIES
Under the Fatimids, al-Qahira became the seat of power, a ceremonial, residential center where the Caliph dwelt with his court and army, but al-Fustat remained the productive and economic center of Egypt. The older city, by that time called simply Misr, had grown into a flourishing metropolis. Travelers visiting it from the tenth to the mid-eleventh centuries reported that it competed in grandeur and prosperity with the greatest Islamic cities of the time. Al-Muqaddasi in the tenth century described the highrise buildings of alFustat as resembling minarets. According to Nasirl Khusraw, a Persian traveler of the early eleventh century, some of these buildings climbed as high as fourteen stories up to roof gardens complete with ox-drawn water wheels for irrigating them. Khusraw dedicates long descriptive passages to the city's thriving markets, and finally confesses, "I have seen so much wealth in al-Fustat that if I tried to list or describe it, my words would not be believed. I found it impossible to count or estimate it."
Recent excavations at al-Fustat have corroborated some of these contemporary descriptions. Eyewitnesses wrote that in the densest part of the city, around the mosque of cAmr, merchants displayed goods from all over the world. Excavations have revealed Chinese wares of the most refined quality that found their way to al-Fustat. The digs have also revealed considerable sophistication below the street level. The intricate sewerage system took advantage of differing altitudes of al-Fustat's terrain to distribute water and eliminate wastes. According to other visitors' accounts, al-Fustat also suffered, for all its glory and sophistication, from problems familiar to the inhabitants of modern cities.
The physician Ibn Ridwan (d. 1068) thought the streets were too narrow for their high buildings. The hills to the east and north prevented proper ventilation of the city so that the stagnant air became polluted, particularly with smoke from the furnaces of a multitude of steam baths. Dead animals thrown into the Nile contaminated the drinking water, and the congestion and dilapidation of the heart of al-Fustat shocked some visitors. In the twelfth century Ibn Sac ld from Seville noted that the mosque of cAmr had fallen victim to a traffic problem. The monument, its premises crowded with women, children and peddlers and its walls covered with graffiti, served the city's population as a short-cut between two streets. Al-Qahira, on the other hand, stood high above the problems of the mother city. Nasirl Khusraw, describing the Fatimid Caliph's city, refers to mansions and gardens of incredible beauty. Of the palace complex, dominating the center of town like a mountain, he writes: I saw a series of buildings, terraces and rooms.
There were twelve adjoining pavilions, all of them square in shape. ... There was a throne in one of them that took up the entire width of the room. Three of its sides were made of gold on which were hunting scenes depicting riders racing their horses and other subjects; there were also inscriptions written in beautiful characters. The rugs and hangings were Greek satin and moire woven precisely to fit the spot where they were to be placed. A balustrade of golden lattice work surrounded the throne, whose beauty defies all description. Behind the throne were steps of silver. I saw a tree that looked like an orange tree, whose branches, leaves and fruits were made of sugar. A thousand statuettes and figurines also made of sugar were also placed there. A French ambassador to Cairo, speaking of the palace in 1167, mentions floors of colored marble, grouted with gold, and a courtyard surrounded by magnificent colonnaded porticos. Water from a central fountain trickled through gold and silver pipes into channels and pools.
There was a menagerie and an aviary filled with exotically colored birds from all over the world. Long passages of Maqrlzl's account tell of the different treasure halls of the Fatimid palaces and an academy with a vast library. These accounts imply that by the end of the eleventh century, Egypt's two symbiotic capitals, Misr and alQahira, physically manifested the separation between the indigenous people and the ruling elite. The larger one, Misr, supported the productive and mercantile population, while al-Qahira was inhabited exclusively by the foreign rulers and their entourage. Commoners employed in the royal city returned to al-Fustat (Misr) at the end of the working day. Each city had a port. That of al-Fustat was close to its markets, while alMaqs or Umm Dunayn (the pre-Islamic village of Tandunias) harbored the Fatimid fleet. This situation, however, did not survive the next century. In the twelfth century a series of natural catastrophes, plague followed by famine and a violent earthquake, severely depopulated al-Fustat and arrested its development. Al-Qata> i c , on the northern outskirts, had not recovered from its destruction by Abbasid troops. The Fatimid vizier Badr al-Jamall, responding to the situation, permitted the transfer of some markets to al-Qahira and allowed wealthy citizens to build new houses in the formerly exclusive city.
Al-Fustat was thus already in decline when the French King Amaury (Amalric) and his Crusaders came from Jerusalem to attack Egypt. Nur al-Dln of Syria sent his armies to aid the Fatimids, and the Muslim troops, led by Shlrkuh and his nephew Salah al-Dln, fought the Crusaders from 1164 to 1169. During these campaigns the Fatimid vizier Shawar is reported to have ordered the burning of al-Fustat to stop the invaders. After his victory over the Franks, Salah al-Dln became vizier under the last Fatimid Caliph, whom he overthrew in 1171, reestablishing the supremacy of the Sunni Caliphate of Baghdad and ending two centuries of Ismac Ili Shic ite rule in Egypt. These upheavals consolidated changes already in progress. Once opened to whoever wished to live there, al-Qahira completely eclipsed al-Fustat.
The suburbs of the older city had decayed, leaving large empty spaces between al-Fustat and al-Qahira. Salah al-Dln set out to enclose both cities and the intervening areas within one long set of walls. Undaunted by the enormity of the task, he also intended his wall to extend westward across the Khallj to include the port of al-Maqs, and eastward to al-Muqattam, where he began his Citadel in the Syrian tradition of hilltop fortifications. He died before these projects were completed, and the walls of Cairo were never continued. The Citadel, however, designed not only as a fortress but also as the residence of sultans, was enlarged and embellished with new buildings throughout its history.
THE OUTSKIRTS
The city expanded on all sides under subsequent rulers. Under the Mamluks there was extensive development along the road leading from Bab Zuwayla to the Citadel and its royal palaces. Natural forces played a part as well. The Nile's course shifted to the west in the fourteenth century, transforming the island of Bulaq into a port on the eastern bank and leaving alMaqs, which Salah al-Dln had planned to fortify, far inland. On the eastern edge of al-Qahira the cemetery founded by al-Nasir Muhammad, like that of Fustat farther to the south, expanded into the desert and soon became the site of important religious foundations.
The Khallj, which for centuries had formed the western border of the city, fed a number of ponds in the western, northern and southern outskirts. The Nile flooded these ponds in summer, leaving their beds green with vegetation when the waters receded. The beauty of these ponds made them the summer resorts of Cairenes, and many princely residences were built near them, particularly the Birkat al-Fll in the south. The pond of Azbakiyya came into vogue during the late Mamluk period and remained fashionable under the Ottomans. Orchards and pleasure buildings on the western bank of the Khallj gradually gave way to urbanization during the Ottoman period (1517-1914), as the city's northern areas expanded toward the Nile. THE NAMES OF CAIRO The word Cairo is derived from the Arabic alQahira, which is not, however, the name commonly used by Egyptians to designate their capital. They have always called it Masr (the popular form of Misr, meaning Egypt). Al-Qahira is the official term used in written Arabic today. Egyptian medieval historians make a clear distinction between Misr and Al-Qahira.
Al-Qahira is the name of that part of the capital established in 969 by the Fatimid dynasty as its residential city. Misr is the abbreviation of Fustat-Misr, or Fustat of Egypt, designating the first Muslim capital of Egypt founded by the Arab general cAmr Ibn al-cAs in 641-42. There are two interpretations of the word Fustat. While European scholars usually derive it from the Greek and Latin fossatum meaning trench, which could be a pre-Islamic local toponym, Arab scholars prefer to interpret it as the Arabic fustat, meaning tent. According to legend, the name originated when the Arab troops on their way to Alexandria left the tent of cAmr Ibn al-cAs behind in order not to disturb a dove that had built a nest in it. In time, people dropped the word al-Fustat, and the area of the early Arab foundation was once again known as Misr. The term Misr was later extended to refer to the whole capital, composed of both al-Fustat and al-Qahira. Ottoman coins from Egypt are inscribed, duriba fi misr, "struck in Misr", and Ottoman coins always refer to the city rather than to the province where they were struck.
The mint was at the Citadel, in al-Qahira. In the Ottoman period alFustat (or Misr) itself was called Misr al-cAtiqa, referring to the part of the city today called Misr al-Qadima, meaning Old Misr. Many people still call it Misr al-cAtiqa. The habit of calling the entire Egyptian capital Cairo, or al-Qahira, was begun by Europeans who visited Egypt. The name was reinforced by Napoleon's French scholars, who made a scholarly survey of the city which they called Le Kaire, translated by the British as Cairo. Cairo's traditional byname is Misr alMahrusa, or Cairo, the Protected City. Despite its many losses, Cairo has been spared wholesale devastations by wars and other calamities, and today offers us a wealth of historic architecture.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق