old cairo

My dear friend,

If I’ve delayed writing to you this week, it isn’t because I haven’t been thinking of you. It’s because I wanted to tell you about Old Cairo, but I didn’t think I understood it well enough to be able to describe it to you. I thought I should read a little more, research a little more, so that I could encapsulate its history in a few brief, vivid sentences—but I’m beginning to see that even if I spent the next three months reading, I still wouldn’t be able to wrap my mind around the history of this place.

So let me try to tell you what I’ve grasped so far.

The history of ancient Egypt is said to begin in 3100 B.C. with the unification of Upper and Lower Egypt by King Narmer. (His name, I believe, means “Angry Catfish”—which is the name of our neighborhood bicycle / coffee shop in South Minneapolis!) There were communities living in the region for thousands of years before Narmer, of course—but we’ll return to them another time. For now, let’s fast-forward 3000 years, whipping through centuries and dynasties of pharaonic rulers, until we reach the death of Cleopatra in 30 B.C. This is when Egyptian pharaohs were replaced by Roman emperors, and Egypt became a province of Rome. When Christianity swept through the empire and reached Egypt, those who embraced it were called “Copts.” For a brief period, Christianity was the official religion of Egypt. But after Egypt was conquered for Islam in 641 A.D., the Coptic community dwindled. Its followers clustered in the area that we now call “Old Cairo” but which was once a Roman fortress known as “Babylon-in-Egypt.” There, in medieval times, they built the quiet, ornate churches in which present-day worshippers still gather for services. The services are generally conducted in Arabic, although parts of the liturgy are sung in a more archaic language with roots in ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics. Today, about ten percent of the population in the country identifies as Christian.

We signed up for a guide on guruwalk.com (a pay-what-you-will tour service), climbed in a taxi, and motored over to our meeting place in front of the Mosque of Amr Ibn al-Aas, named for the Arabic general who led his Muslim army to that victory over Egypt in 641 A.D. A stone’s throw from Coptic Cairo, this mosque was the first in Egypt (also the first in Africa)—but it’s been rebuilt and restored so many times that nothing of the original remains.

On the walk from the mosque to the first church on our itinerary, our guide Abduo asked C. where he was from.

“Boston,” C. said.

“No.” Abduo tried again. “I mean, where are you from?”

“Boston,” repeated C. “New England. The East Coast? You know it?”

“No.” Abduo peered more closely at him. “Before that. Where are you from?”

After a moment, C.’s expression cleared. “My family is from Lebanon.”

“Ah-ha!” Abduo’s grin widened. “I knew it!”

Abduo was a fine guide, as we later reported in our online review. Although we often felt rushed, his speed was strategic: he whisked us in and out of churches before larger groups arrived, which meant that we usually had a few minutes in the space by ourselves. We began in the Hanging Church, so-called because it was constructed not on solid ground but rather on the water gate of the old Roman fortress. A glass panel in the floor invites visitors to confirm this fact for themselves. Abduo also hurried us through the Church of St. Barbara and the Church of St. Sergius. The latter’s claim to fame is that it stands above the cave where the Holy Family found shelter during their flight to Egypt.

[And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.]

Abduo pulled up short before a well in the floor of the church and insisted on taking our picture before it. It was only later, on a second pass through the space once he’d bid us farewell, that we noticed the sign: “The Well Which The Holy Family Drank From.”

Due to the shifting desert landscape and the changing course of the Nile, much of what was once above ground is now sunken below. We followed Abduo through hushed stone alleys, past booksellers and darkened souvenir shops, to Ben Ezra: Egypt’s oldest synagogue, which is also said to be the site where the pharaoh’s daughter found Moses in the bulrushes. Between the 4th and 9th centuries A.D., a church stood here; but then, as we’re told in my favorite sentence of the Rough Guide, the site changed hands:

Sold to the Jews so that the Copts could pay taxes to finance Ibn Tulun’s Mosque, this church was either demolished or incorporated within the synagogue, which Abraham Ben Ezra, the rabbi of Jerusalem, restored in 1041.

What I love about this description is the way it underscores the complicated, overlapping histories of the Jews, Copts, and Muslims who shared these streets and—as it turns out—these stones. In the 19th century, a treasure trove of medieval documents were discovered hidden away in the synagogue’s genizah (or geniza), a storeroom which houses sacred texts that are no longer being used but which cannot, according to rabbinic law, be destroyed. What’s fascinating about the Ben Ezra Genizah is that it contains not only religious documents, but also records of daily life. According to the Cambridge Digital Library, where you can peruse some of the texts online:

At least from the early 11th century, the Jews of Fustat, one of the most important and richest Jewish communities of the Mediterranean world, reverently placed their old texts in the Genizah. Remarkably, however, they placed not only the expected religious works, such as Bibles, prayer books and compendia of Jewish law, but also what we would regard as secular works and everyday documents: shopping lists, marriage contracts, divorce deeds, pages from Arabic fables, works of Sufi and Shi'ite philosophy, medical books, magical amulets, business letters and accounts, and hundreds of letters…

Letters like this one, of course. In a thousand years, once you and I have been gone for centuries already—will any of my words remain?

After Abduo left us, we wandered past the remains of the South Tower of the Roman fortress Babylon-in-Egypt and we climbed the steps to the Church of St. George. From a great height, we stood for a while to watch a train rattle past crumbling apartment buildings with laundry hanging from balconies like freshly-washed prayer flags. Eventually we found ourselves in a Coptic cemetery, passing our water bottle back and forth, trying to make the water last as long as possible in the scorching midday heat, trying not to covet the Holy Family’s private well.

No matter how many timelines I draw in my notebook (alongside my Arabic vocabulary lists), or how often I study my guidebooks, I still struggle to comprehend the immensity of Egyptian history. C. says that I shouldn’t worry about this so much; he says that it’s enough simply to be in this space, even if I can’t take it all in. He’s a historian, so I suppose I trust him.

Sometimes we remind each other that when Cleopatra sailed down the Nile with Julius Caesar, the Sphinx was already so ancient that it had been swept over by desert sand. They floated by without knowing it was there.

What else is buried around here that I can’t yet see?

Yours—L.