Defending Fatimid al-Qahira

The Fatimid Shi'a sect originated in the Syrian town of Salamiyya. Its clandestine missionary work made little headway in the Near East, but was effective in Ifriqayya, a North African region which is today Tunisia. The prophet of the sect relocated to Ifriqayya in AD915. His Fatimid caliphate overcame the lands of modern Algeria, Libya, and Morocco. It repeatedly attacked Ikhshidid Egypt, invading even before relocating to the Maghreb. Under Caliph Ma‘adh abu Tam'm al-Mu‘izz li Diin Allah, the campaign paid off. Fatimid wizier and ethnic Greek Gawhar as-Siqilli ar-Rumi ("the Sicilian, the Roman") founded Cairo on 6 July AD969 after treating with the Ikhshidid Egyptian administrators, laying siege to Giza, and guaranteeing Sunnis freedom of worship. It did not hurt the Fatimid cause that the Nile crested at 12 cubits, 17 fingers, during the flood of August-September AD967. This was the lowest level that had been recorded since the Islamic conquest. Famine followed.

Caliph al-Mu‘izz had ordered Gawhar to establish a Fatimid metropolis distinct from Egyptian al-Fustat, one that could rule the world, presumably exploiting Egypt's agricultural wealth and trade location. Gawhar's al-Qahira followed the Fatimid urban model, going so far as to adopt names for two of the city's eight gates from the first entirely-new Fatimid capital, Tunisia's al-Mahdiyya, and a town that the Fatimids built in Syria, al-Mansour. Each of these prior
cities also had, at its heart, two palaces facing one another across a north-south main street. (The gates are Bab al-Futuh and Bab Zuwayla. The central street in al-Qahira is Shaarih al-Mu‘izz li Diin Allah, although more generally termed the Qasaba.) With the exception of the Masged Gumm'aa al-Azhar (see below), the monuments of Fatimid al-Qahira line the Qasaba.

The city of Gawhar was almost perfectly square, and cardinal. It was staked out prior to beginning excavation. Gawhar possibly called his town al-Mansouriyya ("the Conqueror"). Caliph al-Mu‘izz li Diin Allah himself entered the city for the first time in AD973, pointedly avoiding al-Fustat in the process. At this time, at least, the place became known as al-Qahira ("the thing that compels others to submit"). One of the 99 Beautiful Names of God is "al-Qahhaar," or "The One who Subdues."

Gawahar's choice of location is extraordinary rational, at least in terms of its north-south placement. And, since the Nile has shifted westward since Fatimid times, it was not so far from the Nile and in times when the river crested above 16 cubits the Khalig could supply potable water and wastewater disposal services close in. The Qasaba extended south so far as the perimeter of al-Fustat, then circled east of the pre-Fatimid settlement. Today it effectively terminates at Midan Sayyida Aisha and the intersection with Shaarih Salah Salem. At this point in prior times, it exited the Ayyubid wall. It does pass into the Qarafa, which would always have been a path into the desert.

However, it is possible that the Qasaba existed before al-Qahira, and that Gawhar appropriated it and centered his city on it. The odds of the Qasaba being in place prior to al-Qahira are raised when one considers that the street passes in front of the shrine of Sayyida Nafisa, a major pre-Fatimid monument that continues in use today. It wold have been a important place of visitation during the Caliphate, and raised the importance of the later, Fatimid components of the Qasaba.

Gawhar had chosen for al-Qahira a location far to the north of al-Fustat, intending his town (upstream on the Nile) to defend the latter settlement and permit the Fatimid army to camp between al-Qahira and al-Fustat while al-Qahira itself was being prepared as their quarters. The army could temporarily occupy what had once been Tulunid al-Qata'i. Al-Qahira allowed the Fatimid caliphs a majestic separation from the commercial city of Sunni Muslims, Jews, and Copts, and kept the Fatimid soldiers from fraternizing with Egyptians. Gawhar demolished a Coptic monastery and a small castle and garden to clear the land.

The western wall was delimited by the Khalig ("canal"), which protected it from Nile floods and served as a moat, and the eastern one by the extent of stormwater surges from the Muqattan. His walls were wide enough to for two horses to pass one another when circumnavigating the wall top. Gawhar's engineers fashioned the walls of large mud brick ("lagin"), probably covered with lime stucco. Al-Qahira needed the defenses: the Eastern Arabian Qarmatah (oddly, another rebellious Isma'ili sect) battled the Fatimids until AD974. The area within the walls was 136 hectares.

Al-Qahira was not built for commerce, but for royalty, administration, religious practice, and proselytizing Isma'ili Shi'a Islam. (Gawhar constructed Masged Gumm'aa al-Azhar, "the Appearing," in AD970 as a headquarters for Fatimid clerics and a Friday masged worthy of the caliph's weekly homily. In AD989, it would become only the world's second university, an establishment made with Isma'ili theology and missionary work in mind). There were intended to be few markets and craft shops. These were to serve only the caliph, his retinue, his clerics, and his troops. While not so vigorously as al-Fustat, al-Qahira did develop a substantial service and manufacturing sector. The interior zone near Bab Zuwayla became the province of the roasters ("shaawa'iin") and that adjacent to Masged al-Aqmar was given over to the candle-makers ("shamma'iin").

The city was divided into wards, with each ward assigned to a tribe of Fatimid soldiers. Some of the tribal or communal names continue to designate places.

"Zuwayla," for example, not only repeats a traditional Fatimid gate name, but designated the quarters of troops from al-Mansour and al-Mahdiyya. Al-Husaniyya, the area to the north of the Fatimid wall, was named after the tribe camped there.

By AD1050 the labin walls had collapsed, although some of the gates would endure into Mamluki times. Mud brick requires continual upkeep. Fatimid al-Qahira was rich enough: al-Fustat was at its wealthiest during the caliphate, profiting from the land route connecting Red Sea ports and the Nile, which was still wide enough there to permit boats to maneuver and dock. The caliphate chose not to fix the walls because the state did not need them. Fatimid armies were stronger than the threat of invasion. Caliph Al-Hakim bi-'Amr Allah built his great masged, one larger than al-Azhar and one that contained the city's first open library, in al-Husaniyya, outside formal al-Qahira, in AD1013. Caliph al-Hakim's sanity was, and continues to be, questioned. (After his murder, a dissident sect, the Druze, would construct an Islamically-heretical theology around al-Hakim. The Druze keep a community in Lebanon.) However, he must have been confident that he was not putting such an investment at risk.

By the wazierate of Al-Malik al-Afdal ibn Badr al-Gamali Shahanshah (AD1074-1094), Fatimid Egypt's security was in doubt. Internally, the nation was suffering economically and the regime lacked political legitimacy. (In spite of al-Gamali's effort to enlist Sunni members of the cult of 'Ali, Egyptians continued to resist conversion to Ismai'ilism. Since some interpretations of Islamic jurisprudence insist that the governors of Muslims be from the body of believers, To some Sunni's, Isma'ilis fell outside religion.) Troops considered mutiny, but the greatest danger seemed to come from the expansionist Seljuk Turks, with whom Badr al-Gamali, an Armenian Christian, was familiar. The wizier ordered the construction of an imposing stone wall, the substantial remnants of which can be seen now.

Al-Gamali formally added a mere 24 hectares to al-Qahira, testament to the fact that Fatimid al-Qahira was always restricted to a palatial function. He wrapped the new wall around the Masged Gumm'aa al-Hakim to the north and set the replacement Bab Zuwayla further south than the original gate, and slightly expanded the city to the east and to the west. The new neighborhoods were named Bayn al-Surayn ("between the two walls"). He reshaped an existing district into what would become al-Gamalayya. The enlarged Fatimid boundary would be the official city limit until the French invasion of 1798. The French would dismantle the southern and western Fatimid walls, allowing the old city to delight in the khalig and freely engaage al-Darb al-Ahmar. The new wall was far from modest, however. It was designed by three Armenian military engineers and masons from Turkish Edessa and incorporated robust defensive elements that had been proven in Byzantium and Syria. Intimidating an attacking army was one intention. The walls are tall (eight meters), severely decorated, and expertly laid up, and battered at the base so as to resist ramming. Indeed, it is stout enough to support the addition of three minarets. The vertical surfaces offered no purchase for climbers. It would have been easy for an invader, or his spy, to conclude that an army would starve or die of thirst before it would breach or top the walls of Badr al-Gamali. Salah id-Diin Yusuf ibn Ayyub began the replacement and extension of the northern and eastern Fatimid walls with frequently-towered walls similar to his Citadel, but kept the western and southern walls as interior defenses, and the part of the Fatimid perimeter that includes the northern gates of Bab al-Futah and Bab al-Nasr. As it would turn out, no wall of Cairo would ever be put to test. Egyptian governments either decayed, fell prey to internal uprising, or made a last stand elsewhere, particularly in Syria. By AD1517, troops in the city would first energetically try to defend the capital, artillery had made these stone walls useless. Even if the Turks had not had cannon, the last Mamluki sultan had too few soldiers to man al-Gamali's perimeter. The last Mamluik charge was broken by Napoléon's crack line troops at the so-called Battle of the Pyramids. Colonel 'Urabi's nationalist attempt to stop British colonialism was made at Tel el-Kehbir.

Al-Qahira's rampart is a masterwork of Arab-Islamic architecture and engineering. As with many Egyptian antiquities, it is global patrimony now in the care of the Arab Republic.

• Brian Broadus