Title
Cairo : Histories of a City / Nezar AlSayyad.
ISBN
9780674060791
Published
Cambridge, MA : Harvard University Press, [2011]
Copyright
©2013
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (352 p.) : 73 color illustrations, 9 halftones, 13 color maps
Item Number
10.4159/harvard.9780674060791 doi
Summary
From its earliest days as a royal settlement fronting the pyramids of Giza to its current manifestation as the largest metropolis in Africa, Cairo has forever captured the urban pulse of the Middle East. In Cairo: Histories of a City, Nezar AlSayyad narrates the many Cairos that have existed throughout time, offering a panoramic view of the city's history unmatched in temporal and geographic scope, through an in-depth examination of its architecture and urban form.In twelve vignettes, accompanied by drawings, photographs, and maps, AlSayyad details the shifts in Cairo's built environment through stories of important figures who marked the cityscape with their personal ambitions and their political ideologies. The city is visually reconstructed and brought to life not only as a physical fabric but also as a social and political order-a city built within, upon, and over, resulting in a present-day richly layered urban environment. Each chapter attempts to capture a defining moment in the life trajectory of a city loved for all of its evocations and contradictions. Throughout, AlSayyad illuminates not only the spaces that make up Cairo but also the figures that shaped them, including its chroniclers, from Herodotus to Mahfouz, who recorded the deeds of great and ordinary Cairenes alike. He pays particular attention to how the imperatives of Egypt's various rulers and regimes-from the pharaohs to Sadat and beyond-have inscribed themselves in the city that residents navigate today.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 30. Aug 2021)
Frontmatter
Contents
Preface
Preamble
Road map
1. Memphis: The First Cairo
2. From Ancient Egypt to the Coptic Enclave
3. Fustat-Misr: The City of Arab Islam
4. Al-Qahira: A Fatimid Palatial Town
5. Fortress Cairo: From Salah al-Din to the Pearl Tree
6. The Bahri Mamluks: The City of the Slave Sultans
7. Governing from the Tower: The Burji Mamluks
8. A Provincial Capital under Ottoman Rule
9. A Changing City: From Napoleon to Muhammad Ali
10. Modernizing the New, Medievalizing the Old: The City of the Khedive
11. The Arab Republic and the City of Nasser
12. Escaping the Present, Consuming the Past
Appendix
Glossary
Endnotes
Figures and Credits
Index
