At the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit to Cairo in 1326, the ruling Sultan was of the Bahri Mamluk line; al Malik (King) an-Nasir Muhammed. The Mamluks were slaves of Circassian, Turkish or Slavic origin who were purchased by the Ayyubid sultanate (1171-1250) to perform military service. Those of merit rose to become commanders or amirs of the army, but by 1250 they had become powerful enough to overthrow the Ayyubids and establish their own dynasty, the Mamluks, which lasted until 1517 and the coming of the Ottomans, under whom they retained considerable power.
Cairo was founded by the Fatimid dynasty in 969AD as ‘al-Qahira’ or 'Victorious'. At the time of the Muslim conquest in 641AD Egypt was ruled from Alexandria, and the only settlement in the area now known as Cairo, was the 2nd century Roman fortress of Babylon founded by Trajan, which had grown under the Byzantines to house the Coptic Christian population. The conqueror of Egypt, Arab general Amr ibn al-’As, established his own capital nearby the Christian quarter, which he called al-Fustat, or 'encampment'. The name refers to the fact that early Muslim conquerors did not mix with the local populations and their armies lived in garrisons outside existing cities. Al-Fustat prospered and expanded until the 10th century, but its importance declined as the fortunes of Cairo rose, and by the time of the Mamluks the wealthier classes had moved out, leaving only the poor and dispossessed.
Ibn B mentions the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-’As which still stands in al-Fustat although even by the 14th century it had been rebuilt far beyond its founding in 642AD. The latest re-building is 20th century and while the building itself is no longer of historic interest, the Mosque still holds such special significance for Egyptians that towards the end of Ramadan, when the days are held to be the most important of the month, people come from all over the country to pray here.
Nothing is left architecturally that is of historic importance but its significance to Egyptians is still considerable
And so to the City of the Dead or Qarafa.
“At Cairo too is al-Qarafa, a place of vast repute for blessed power...These people build in the Qarafa beautiful domed chapels and surround them by walls so that they look like houses...There are some of them who build a religious house or a madrasa by the side of the mausoleum.”
By the time of Ibn Battuta’s visit the City of the Dead was seven centuries old, having been founded as the cemetery of al-Fustat. Nowadays the Qarafa is separated by the citadel into two parts; the northern cemetery and the southern cemetery. The more important and spectacular of the two is the northern cemetery but most of its tombs were built after Ibn Battuta’s time. One of the oldest tombs is the Tomb of Tashtimur which Ibn Battuta does not mention because the man in question was very much alive when Ibn B. was in Cairo. In fact he mentions him as one of the amirs of Cairo;
“Another {amir} was Tushtu who was known as ‘Green Chickpeas’; he was one of the best of the amirs and had to his credit many charities to orphans for clothing and upkeep and payment of salary to a teacher to instruct them in the Koran. He also made large benefactions to the vagabonds known as harafish who are a large organized body, hard-faced folk and lewd.”He goes on to relate that the King once imprisoned ‘Tushtu’ in the citadel whereupon thousands of harafish gathered below the ramparts and chanted;
“Ho, thou ill-starred limper, fetch him out”.The ill-starred limper was of course the King who did let him out, but he imprisoned him a second time and again the harafish made a scene and he was released once more. Arrested again in 1342 the King (now Nasr Mohammed's son), taking no chances, swiftly had him executed.
View of the citadel taken from the top of the Qait Bey minaret of al-Azhar Mosque.
The Qarafa had ‘blessed power’ because Sufi brotherhoods or tariqas had established tekkes (Turkish word for convent) there. Outside the city walls and far from the commercial concerns and political intrigue of Cairo, they devoted themselves to the spiritual. Many of them were later buried here and their tombs, venerated by locals, gave the cemetery special status. The Bahri Mamluks supported the sufis by building khanqahs (convents) to house their members, and when they died they built their tombs in the vicinity of the sufis in the hope that some of their baraka or blessing would rub off on them. Most of the tombs that Ibn Battuta mentions in the southern cemetery are no longer to be found - with an acute shortage of housing in Cairo people took to living in the graveyards. The tombs were of such size and magnificence that thousands of people could be housed quite easily within their walls and consequently whole townships of the living grew up within the City of the Dead. In the process many of the tombs became wholly incorporated into housing units, which remains the case today.
One of the tombs mentioned by Ibn Battuta is that of Sayyida Nafisa, a great, great-grandaughter of Ali, the 4th Caliph, whose tomb is still venerated to this day. He also mentions the tomb of
“...Imam Abu Abdullah Mohammed ibn Idris al-Shafi, close by which is a large convent. The mausoleum enjoys an immense revenue and is surmounted by the famous dome of admirable workmanship and marvellous construction, an exceedingly fine piece of architecture and exceptionally lofty, the diameter of which exceeds thirty cubits. “
Shafi, who died in 820, was the founder of one of the four schools of canonical law in Sunni Islam. The dome, painted in arabesques and floral patterns in muted shades of red, blue and gold, is indeed immense and is the largest mortuary temple in Egypt. Inside the mausoleum are several tombs in addition to that of al-Shafi, including the wife of al-Adil, the second Ayyubid Sultan, who built it. I was the only foreigner at the tomb.
One of the sayings attributed to al-Shafi is; “Diligence (al-jidd) brings near each distant aim, and fortune (al-jadd) opens every bolted door.” I have decided to use this as my motto for the trip as it pretty much sums it up perfectly.
One piece of jadd I have had is finding the Hotel Talisman which has become my home away from home in Cairo. Located downtown on Talaat Harb Street, this charming boutique hotel opened in 2005. Its 24 rooms and public areas, are decorated in Egyptian-Ottoman style, featuring colored glass chandeliers and lampstands, brass lanterns, local textiles, pearl-inlay wooden furniture and mashrabbiya, the wooden screen that was used over balconied windows to allow the women of the house to see out without letting anyone see in. You can contact the hotel by phone at (+20-2) 393 9431 or by email at talisman_hoteldecharme@yahoo.fr. Should you decide to stay here, the hotel staff will give you directions because, being very discreet, nobody knows where it is.
