The origins of the present-day
Cairo can be traced back to the Egyptian capital of Memphis, which is believed
to have been founded in the early 4th millennium BC near the head of the Nile
delta, south of the present city. The city spread to the north along the east
bank of the Nile, and its location has commanded political power ever since. It
was there that the Romans constructed their city called Babylon. Muslim Arabs
who immigrated there from the Arabian Peninsula in AD 641 later called the site
Al Fustat. When a dissident branch of Muslims known as the Fatimid conquered
Egypt in 969, they established their headquarters in the city and called it
Al-Qahira (Cairo). In the 12th century Christian Crusaders attacked Cairo, but
they were defeated by a Muslim army from Syria, led by Saladin, who founded the
Ayyubid Dynasty in the city.
The Mamluke established their
capital in Cairo in the 13th century, and the city became renowned throughout
Africa, Asia, and Europe. Cairo declined after the mid-14th century, however,
when the epidemic of bubonic plague known as the Black Death struck the city,
decimating its population.
The Ottomans conquered Cairo in
1517, and ruled there until 1798, when the area was captured during an
expedition led by Napoleon I of France. Ottoman rule was restored in 1801, but
by the middle of the 19th century Egypt's foreign debt and the weakness of the
Ottoman Empire invited greater European influence in Cairo. The Viceroy Ismail
Pasha, who ruled from 1863 to 1879, built many European-style structures in the
city and used the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo
in 1869 to showcase the city for the European powers. However, much of the
development that took place during this period was funded by foreign loans, which
led to an increase in the national debt and left Cairo vulnerable to control by
Great Britain. The British effectively ruled Egypt from Cairo from the late
19th century through the period after World War I (1914-1918), when the foreign
presence in Cairo began to diminish.
Cairo's population grew rapidly in
the in the war years, reaching 2 million by the outbreak of World War II in
1939. Since that time the city has continued to boom in terms of both
population and development. Some of this population growth has resulted from
the influx of refugees from cities along the Suez Canal that were damaged in
the Arab-Israeli wars of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Many new residential,
commercial, and governmental structures have changed the city's landscape. Tourist
facilities have proven an important source of foreign revenue for Egypt, and
have thus drawn heavy investment from the government.
Cairo has also benefited from
Egypt's growing international prominence. The founding of the Arab League in
1945 made Cairo a political capital, as has Egypt's ongoing participation in
the Middle East peace process. However, in 1981 the city witnessed a tragic
event when Egyptian President Anwar Al-Sadat was assassinated at a military
parade by Islamic fundamentalists within the Egyptian army.
Also, Cairo is an important centre
for publishing and other forms of media. Its newspapers, which include Al-Ahram
(founded in 1875) and Al-Akhbar (1952), exert wide influence within the Islamic
world, as does Radio Cairo. The rich cultural life is further enhanced by local
theatre, cinema, dance, and music, in addition to the city's vibrant community
of journalists and fiction writers; Cairo residents take great pride in the
work of Nobel Prize-winning author and Cairo native Naguib Mahfouz, whose
fiction has provided a chronicle of the city.
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