Prosperity only returned to the Fayum in the late nineteenth century, when modern transport and communications finally reconnected this remote region with the rest of Egypt. The British brought the railway in 1893, to be followed by the first metalled road from Cairo in the 1930s. As a result, once-small villages have burgeoned into substantial towns. The regional capital, Medinet el-Fayum, occupies the same location as its pharaonic and classical predecessors (Shedyt and Krokodilopolis), but it presents a thoroughly modern picture, typical of any growing city in Egypt. Mud-brick buildings have been replaced by ugly concrete boxes, more often than not with steel rods projecting rustily from an unfinished top storey; the streets are clogged with traffic, more cars than carts; and pollution hangs in the air, eating away at what few ancient ruins remain. Gone, in this sprawling town, is the sense of a community rooted in an agricultural way of life; gone, too, the temples with their pools for sacred crocodiles. In fact, just about the only indication of Medinet el-Fayum’s great antiquity is a lone monument, marooned on a roundabout on the main route into town. A towering round-topped obelisk, smooth-faced and entirely undecorated but for the royal name of its builder King Senusret I, it once stood sentinel outside the village of Abgig, a few miles to the south-west. There, it pointed towards the spot where the Bahr Yusuf leaves the Nile Valley and enters the Fayum depression—a marker, perhaps, to celebrate the fertility of the Fayum under pharaonic rule. Its removal to a charmless roundabout in Medinet el-Fayum signalled, unwittingly, a new crisis in the history of the Fayum.
The construction of the High Dam at Aswan and greater extraction of water for irrigation have starved Birket Qarun of its lifeblood. Without a steady influx of fresh water, evaporation from the lake surface has turned its water increasingly saline—to the point where it is no longer good for irrigating the fields, nor even for sustaining much in the way of fish stocks. As concerned locals will testify, Birket Qarun is slowly dying. And, as livelihoods are threatened, poverty and lack of opportunity all too easily breed resentment and extremism, as other parts of Egypt have learned to their cost.
On my last visit to the Fayum, an escort of armed soldiers was deemed necessary, all the way from Cairo. When we announced that we wanted to see the mud-brick pyramid of Senusret II, the minibus driver was reluctant to drive through the nearby town of Lahun, for fear of being attacked. His relief when we finally left the town behind us and saw the pyramid on the horizon was palpable. But the soldiers were not so relaxed. Before we were allowed out of the bus and anywhere near the pyramid, they jumped out of their jeep and fanned out across the landscape. Only when they had taken up positions on every elevation, guns trained outwards, were we finally allowed to walk to the pyramid enclosure. Even then, a few minutes, just enough to jog around the perimeter and take a few photos, was all that the guards’ nerves could take. Before we knew it, the bus horn was blaring and we were being hurriedly beckoned back for a quick getaway. No member of the Egyptian security forces wanted to linger for long in the Fayum. Only when we were safely back on the road to Cairo did the soldiers begin to relax.
Against this backdrop of insecurity and environmental degradation, the destiny of the Fayum looks uncertain, if not bleak. But this lake in the desert has seen many ups and downs in its nine-thousand-year history, and has always proved resilient, despite periods of great adversity. Perhaps the rescue of those Neolithic grain pits from the farmer’s plough will come to be seen as a turning point: by honouring its origins, the Fayum may have a brighter future.
[Cairo] is the glory of Islam, and is the marketplace for all mankind.1
—AL-MUQADDASI
Cairo is the largest city in Africa, in the Middle East and in the Arab world. This metropolis of at least seventeen million people—a number rising by up to a million every year—is as populous as many countries. Although the kings of ancient Egypt succeeded spectacularly in building the greatest monuments the world has ever seen—still visible from large parts of Cairo as hazy triangles on the horizon—they never had to contend with running and organising a conurbation of more than a few tens of thousands of souls. In its size and scale, Cairo is an experiment in urban living unprecedented in Egyptian history—an order of magnitude bigger than any other settlement in the Nile Valley. It is an unbelievable press of humanity: an overcrowded, dilapidated, noisy, smelly, frenetic, impossible city; yet its inhabitants go about their daily lives with resigned good humour, demonstrating the resilience that has characterised the Egyptian people throughout their long history.
As you approach Cairo by river, from Upper Egypt, the southern tip of Roda Island with its ancient Nilometer marks the beginning of the city in both a geographical and an historical sense. From Roda, the historic city spreads northwards and eastwards on the east bank of the river, while in more recent times Cairo has engulfed the islands in the Nile and once-distinct villages and towns (such as Giza) on the west bank, as well as vast tracts of desert in all directions. The southern tip of Roda, or more particularly the stretch of Nile bank immediately opposite, known as Old Cairo, is also the place where Egypt’s capital began, where the heirs of the pharaohs established a new centre of administration for the entire Nile Valley.
Although it has pharaonic monuments aplenty in its museums and public squares, Cairo proper is a post-pharaonic foundation, the one major settlement in Egypt that does not owe its origins to the country’s ancient civilisation. Cairo is an Arab creation, founded by Arab conquerors, home to venerable mosques and madrassas, headquarters of the Arab League. But to think of Cairo as only an Arab city would be to underestimate its cultural complexity. Like all of Egypt, it embodies many different histories and traditions, many influences and contradictions; and it is this extraordinary mix that gives Egypt’s capital its distinctive character and its special appeal.
OPPOSITE THE SOUTHERN TIP of Roda Island, a couple of blocks east of the Nile in Old Cairo, there is a vast area of wasteland, bounded by fences and strewn with rubbish. In a rapidly expanding city, it is distinguished only by its lack of buildings. What keeps it free from development—for the moment—is its history. For this unlikely, unprepossessing spot is all that remains of the first Arab settlement in Egypt, one that would expand and develop into the greatest city in the Arab world. This is the site of Fustat (“tent” in Arabic), where in AD 641, just nine years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, the victorious Arab forces of Amr ibn al-As pitched their camp and established their new capital, having invaded Egypt two years earlier and, after a series of battles, seized the country from its Byzantine rulers. The nearby mosque of Amr, long since rebuilt, is all that remains of Fustat; its construction symbolised the incorporation of Egypt into the Islamic realm, and a new dispensation for the entire Nile Valley. Egypt’s current position as the voice of the Arab world traces its origins to this barren expanse in southern Cairo.
The Arabs may have brought a new religion to Egypt, but they followed ancient traditions when choosing a location for their capital city. From the very dawn of Egyptian history in 3000 BC, when the Nile Valley and Delta were unified under a single king at the beginning of the First Dynasty, the country was ruled from “the junction of the Two Lands”—the apex of the Delta where the Nile splits into several channels on its way to the sea. This was the obvious place from which to govern such a geographically extensive territory, as it lay within relatively easy reach of all parts of the country and of Egypt’s vulnerable north-eastern border. The first kings of Egypt called their capital Inebu-hedj (“white walls”), after the whitewashed palace compound at its physical and symbolic heart. In later generations, the city came to be called after another royal monument, the nearby pyramid of Pepi I, Men-nefer (“established and beautiful”), a designation which the Greeks corrupted into “Memphis.” By whichever name it was known, the pharaonic settlement remained Egypt’s principal seat of administration for nearly three thousand years until the foundation of Alexandria in 332 BC. Yet today, the site of Memphis is as bleak and em
pty as Fustat. As Amelia Edwards lamented, “this is all that remains of Memphis, eldest of cities—a few huge rubbish heaps, a dozen or so of broken statues, and a name!…Memphis is a place to read about, and think about, and remember; but it is a disappointing place to see.”2
Under the Ptolemies, Memphis declined. Under the Romans, it virtually disappeared, superseded as a strategic base by a massive fortress built further north, at a site called Babylon-in-Egypt. The round towers of the western gate and the semicircular bastions of the Water Gate still stand, impressive testaments to the Romans’ military engineering. The reason for their preservation, ironically, is the use to which they were later put: when Egypt, along with the rest of the Roman Empire, converted to Christianity in the fourth century AD, the fortress of Babylon provided firm foundations for some of the Nile Valley’s earliest churches. The northern round tower is today the Greek Orthodox church of St. George, while the semicircular bastions of the Water Gate support the famous fourth-century “Hanging Church” of the Virgin Mary. Other ancient centres of Christian worship in the vicinity include the fifth-century church of St. Sergius, now several feet below street level, where the Holy Family is said to have taken refuge during their sojourn in Egypt, and the church dedicated to St. Barbara, one of Egypt’s early Christian martyrs. The surrounding streets of the Coptic enclave, pedestrianised and peaceful, preserve an atmosphere of antiquity and spirituality that can be difficult to find in the busier parts of Cairo. Christian women can walk here, unmolested, with their heads uncovered; shop-owners are content to stand in their doorways and have tourists come to them.
The close proximity of Fustat to Old Cairo—the site of the first Arab capital lies immediately to the north-east of the Christian quarter—is no accident. Today, we are accustomed to a narrative of religious conflict in the Middle East, but the Arab conquest of Egypt tells a very different story. Ever since the Council of Chalcedon in AD 451, when a doctrinal dispute about the nature of Christ caused a split between the Egyptian and Eastern Orthodox churches, the Copts had suffered discrimination and persecution by their Byzantine overlords. So when the Arab armies under Amr ibn al-As invaded Egypt in AD 639, Egypt’s native (Christian) leaders cooperated with them, hoping they would be more benign. The Arab forces made rapid progress in conquering the country, starting with the battle of Heliopolis on the north-eastern approaches to Cairo (better known today for the international airport and presidential palace). The Byzantine army, having lost control of most of the Delta and Nile Valley, retreated to the fortress of Babylon to make its last stand. Amr’s forces besieged the fortress for six months, from October 640 to April 641, until the Byzantine army finally capitulated. Thus Egypt became a province of the expanding Arab empire, ruled by a governor appointed by the caliph in Mecca. But there was no wholesale process of Islamicisation. The majority of the population remained Christian (at least until the tenth century) and retained their ancient language. For hundreds of years, Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Copts, lived peacefully side by side.
Christianity and Islam were not the only religions of the book to flourish in medieval Cairo. Judaism, too, played an important—though now largely forgotten—role in the story of Egypt’s capital. That the contribution of Cairo’s Jews to their city’s culture and economy is known at all is due to a remarkable discovery made in an attic in the Coptic quarter. Just a street away from the Hanging Church, hidden behind high walls and trees, stands a pale yellow building with a decorative parapet and graceful, arched windows. The only outward clues to its identity are the guards by the entrance and the discreet Stars of David moulded on the window-surrounds. Through an open pane, it is just possible to catch sight of a seven-branched menora. For this is the synagogue of Ben Ezra, once home to a flourishing community of Jews, now a beautifully restored monument open to the public.
According to local tradition, the synagogue is situated on the site where the baby Moses was rescued from the reedy banks of the Nile. Scarcely less shrouded in myth and legend is the history of the building itself. The generally accepted version tells how a synagogue was built in Old Cairo, on the edge of Fustat, some time in the ninth century, only to be converted into a church. This church was destroyed on the orders of the caliph in 1012, then rebuilt and rededicated in 1025. In 1115, so the story goes, Rabbi Abraham Ben Ezra came to Cairo from Jerusalem and petitioned the Muslim authorities to restore the building to the Jewish community. On payment of twenty thousand dinars, his wish was granted and the building became a synagogue again. This complicated history helps to explain the mix of Christian and Jewish features, a pair of confessionals flanking the ark of the covenant. From the tenth to the nineteenth century, Ben Ezra synagogue was the principal place of worship for the Jews of Old Cairo.
It was not devotions that made Ben Ezra special, however, but its secondary role as a repository for old documents. Jewish tradition maintained that any document containing words written in Hebrew—divine words—was sacred and could not be thrown away. Every Jewish community therefore had a genizah, a repository for old documents, usually located in the attic of the local synagogue, out of harm’s way. The Ben Ezra genizah is two stories high, at the far end of the building. Here, for generation upon generation—in fact, for more than eight hundred years—the Jews of Old Cairo deposited their written material of every kind, ranging from poetry and love letters to business contracts and legal deeds. Out of sight, out of mind: the documents piled up, unseen and forgotten.
Until, that is, the end of the nineteenth century, when a Jewish scholar from the University of Cambridge, Rabbi Solomon Schechter, climbed a ladder into the Ben Ezra genizah and saw what lay inside: over a quarter of a million fragments of paper dating back over one thousand years, forming the largest collection of early and medieval Jewish manuscripts ever discovered. The Cairo Genizah provides a unique time-capsule of Jewish culture and belief. At a stroke, it has transformed our understanding and appreciation of early Judaism, of biblical and rabbinic literature, of medieval Islamic history—and study of the collection still continues. The manuscripts record the lives of Jews and the non-Jews with whom they interacted in Old Cairo from the ninth century (the earliest dated document is a marriage certificate from 6 October 871) until the late nineteenth century (the latest dated document is a marriage contract from 1899). They include the earliest fragment of rabbinic literature ever found, and other texts belonging to a breakaway Jewish sect called the Followers of Zadok. Their charismatic leader was referred to as “the Only One” and “the Teacher of Righteousness,” recalling another Jewish leader from Nazareth. Because the Ben Ezra synagogue belonged to the Palestinian Jews, its liturgical texts reflected Palestinian religious practice which differed from the Babylonian rite contained in Jewish prayer books of today.
Despite their religious idiosyncracies, the Jews of medieval Cairo were fully integrated into their local community. They were at the heart of the city’s commercial life, maintaining business and cultural links across North Africa and the Middle East. They were also respected members of society, and some attained high-ranking government positions. The great twelfth-century philosopher Rabbi Moses Maimonides lived within walking distance of the Ben Ezra synagogue. Another member of the congregation was a man from southern Italy who had converted to Judaism in 1102 at the height of the Crusades, found his way to Old Cairo, taken the Hebrew name Obadiah, and flourished as a poet and composer. He left behind, in the Ben Ezra genizah, the oldest piece of Jewish sheet music in existence, a hymn to Moses set to the Gregorian chant of twelfth-century Italy.
Twentieth-century Egypt has been less tolerant of religious difference, and far less kind to its Jewish population. Most left after the 1967 war with Israel, when anti-Semitic sentiment was rife. The Jews of Old Cairo have gone, and today only a tiny Jewish community clings on in Egypt’s capital, in the northern suburb of Abbassia.
LIKE EVERY OTHER SETTLEMENT in Egypt, Fustat–Old Cairo was founded with proximity to the Nile in mind. The
Roman fortress of Babylon-in-Egypt had been positioned to guard a key river crossing, and its impressive Water Gate reflects the importance of access to the Nile. Although the Muslim conquerors who wrested Egypt from Byzantine rule in the mid seventh century were from the Arabian peninsula—an area of desert wastes as far removed from the green Nile Valley as it is possible to imagine—they were well aware of the importance of the Nile to Egypt’s continued prosperity. One of Amr ibn al-As’ first acts was to centralise the irrigation system and order a series of new projects to increase agricultural production. (He also reopened the ancient canal linking the Nile to the Red Sea to facilitate the transport of grain from Egypt to the Hijaz. Having been the breadbasket of the Roman Empire, Egypt now became the granary of the caliphate.) The Nilometer on Roda Island, constructed in the ninth century, measured the productive capacity of the whole country for nearly a thousand years and remains the oldest Islamic monument in Cairo. The Arab writer al-Muqaddasi, who visited around AD 1000, described it as “a pond in the middle of which is a tall column whereon are the marks in cubits and fingers; in charge of it is a superintendent, and around it are doors that fit together tightly.”3
In continuation of ancient Egyptian and Christian custom, Egypt’s early Arab rulers celebrated the festival of the banks of the Nile, which was a spectacle to behold. An historian who visited Egypt in 942 was privileged to be in Cairo on “the Night of the Bath,” which marked the baptism of Christ, when the eastern side of Roda Island and the facing bank of Fustat were lit up by thousands of blazing torches:
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