The story of Cairo
- Free to read
- 6 hours to read
- 19 chapters
The story of Cairo by Stanley Lane-Poole is a historical account written in the early 20th century. It traces Cairo’s making as a resolutely medieval Islamic city, interweaving urban growth, monuments, and daily life with art and architectural analysis. The focus moves from Fustat through Fatimid and Mamluk Cairo, contrasting the enduring “native” city with its newer European veneer. The opening of the work presents Cairo as medieval in spirit despite modern reforms, voices the Cairene’s nostalgia for Mamluk days, and states the aim: to surround surviving buildings with the history and lives that gave them meaning rather than write a general history. It lists key Arabic sources, notes transliteration and illustration choices, and praises efforts to preserve Arab monuments. Chapter I contrasts European and Egyptian Cairo through street vignettes, wedding and circumcision processions, and bazars that evoke the Arabian Nights; it lingers on the conservative tradesman—his stall, bargaining rituals, and courtyard house with mashrabiyya screens, mandara, and segregated harim—then sketches men’s routines, women’s seclusion and visits, and festival life, especially the dazzling Molid of the Hasaneyn; a final panorama from the Citadel surveys domes, minarets, and the desert-pyramid horizon. At the start of Chapter II, the narrative outlines the city’s successive foundations (Fustat, al-‘Askar, al-Katai‘, al-Qahira), Saladin’s enclosing plan, and the Arab conquest eased by Coptic-Greek schism; it recounts Fustat’s “tent” legend, describes the austere origins and many rebuildings of the Mosque of ‘Amr, and notes that while Fustat lies in ruins, the Roman fortress of Babylon endures.
- Cairo (Egypt)
