Although
ruined Memphis, 14 miles southwest of Cairo, was a
metropolis 5,000 years ago, and about 2,000 years ago the
Romans occupied a town on the site of Cairo called
Babylon (now the Misr al-Qadimah quarter), the seed from
which contemporary Cairo sprang was the town of
al-Fustat, founded as a military encampment in AD 641 by
'Amr ibn al-'As, commander of the Arabs who brought Islam
to Egypt. Successor dynasties added royal suburbs
(al-'Askar, founded in 750 by the Umayyads; al-Qata`i',
founded in 870 by Ahmad ibn Tulun) to the increasingly
prosperous commercial and industrial port city of
al-Fustat. Little remains of these early developments in
the southern part of the city, except the tower of Trajan
(AD 130), the mosques of 'Amr ibn al-'As (641) and Ahmad
ibn Tulun (878), and the partially excavated mounds
covering the site of al-Fustat.
In 969 adherents of a dissident Islamic sect, the
Fatimids, invaded Egypt from what is now Tunisia. The
conquering general, Jawhar, established a new rectangular
walled city northeast of existing settlements. Initially
named al-Mansuriyah, the city was renamed al-Qahirah in
973-974 when the Fatimid caliph al-Mu'izz arrived to make
it the capital of a dynasty that lasted for 200 years.
Al-Qahirah and al-Fustat coexisted until 1168, when
unfortified al-Fustat was set on fire to protect Cairo
from the crusaders. The crusaders were driven off by a
Sunni (orthodox Islamic) army from Syria, after which the
victorious commander, Saladin, founded the Ayyubid
dynasty, which controlled a vast empire from Cairo.
Even though al-Fustat was partially rebuilt, Cairo itself
became transformed from a royal enclave into an imperial
metropolis. Saladin further extended the 11th-century
walls built by a high official called Badr al-Jamali (the
northern and southern walls and three main gates,
al-Futuh Gate, an-Nasr Gate, and Zuwaylah Gate, are still
extant) and constructed a citadel on the Muqattam spur
(now dominated by the Muhammad 'Ali Mosque). After 1260,
when Baybars I became the first Mamluk sultan of
undisputed legitimacy, Cairo served as the capital of the
Mamluk empire, which governed Egypt and the Fertile
Crescent until 1516.
Medieval Cairo reached its apogee during the Mamluk era.
By about 1340, almost 500,000 persons lived in an area
five times greater than the original Fatimid walled city,
and Cairo had become the greatest city of Africa, Europe,
and Asia Minor. Its al-Azhar University was the principal
seat of Islamic learning. The city was a key link in the
profitable East-West spice trade and the recipient of
tribute from a wealthy empire. Most of Cairo's greatest
architectural masterpieces were built during this epoch.
Decline set in thereafter--sporadically at first, and
then precipitously. The population was decimated by
plagues, including the Black Death in 1348. The spice
trade monopoly was broken by Vasco da Gama's voyage from
Portugal to India (1497-99). Finally, political autonomy
was lost to the conquering Turks, who, after 1517,
reduced Cairo to a provincial capital. In 1798, when
Napoleon and his troops arrived in Cairo, fewer than
300,000 people were living in the city and its two port
suburbs, Misr al-Qadimah and Bulaq. The Turks returned
after Napoleon's defeat in 1801. In 1805 Muhammad 'Ali,
commander of an Albanian contingent, was appointed pasha,
thus founding the dynasty that ruled Egypt until his
great-great-grandson, Farouk I, abdicated in 1952 .