231) CAIRO MY LOVE - 1

I always loved Cairo to the extent that I established a NGO called Cairo Friendship Association and it was so poplular in the 90s that we were in AUC, Ein Shams, Cairo, Helwan, even Switzerland, Manama, and Canada. We even built a complete Egyptian Alley inside the AUC campus in 1996-7.

I hate what Cairo has reached now, and I am starting -on its 1038th anniversary - some Facts and Fadfada about this OM EL DONIA EL MA7ROUSA....u r most welcome to share in this series...

Mohaly

Pre-Cairo: Al-Fustat was founded in AD 648 near other Egyptian cities and villages, including the old Egyptian capital Memphis, Heliopolis, Giza and the Byzantine fortress of Babylon-in-Egypt. However, Fustat was itself a new city built as a military garrison for Arab troops and was the closest central location to Arabia that was accessible to the Nile.

Fustat became a regional center of Islam during the Umayyad period and was where the Umayyad ruler, Marwan II, made his last stand against the Abbasids. Later, during the Fatimid era, Cairo was officially founded in AD 969 as an imperial capital and it absorbed Fustat.

During its history various dynasties would add suburbs to the city and construct important structures that became known throughout the Islamic world including the Al-Azhar mosque. Conquered by Saladin and ruled by Ayyubids starting in 1171, it remained an important center of the Muslim world. Slave soldiers or Mamluks seized Egypt and ruled from their capital at Cairo from 1250 to 1517 when they were defeated by the Ottomans.

Following Napoleon's brief occupation, an Ottoman officer named Muhammad Ali made Cairo the capital of an independent empire that lasted from 1801 to 1882. The city came under British control until Egypt attained independence in 1922.

Today, Greater Cairo encompasses various historic towns and modern districts into one of the most populous cities in the world. A journey through Cairo is a virtual time travel: from the Pyramids, Saladin's Citadel, the Virgin Mary's Tree, the Sphinx, and ancient Heliopolis, to Al-Azhar, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-A'as, Saqqara, the Hanging Church, and the Cairo Tower. It is the Capital of Egypt, and indeed its history is intertwined with that of the country. Today, Cairo's official name is Al-Qahira (Cairo), although the name informally used by most Egyptians is "Masr".