Brief History of Cairo

Cairo's history actually begins with a Roman trading outpost called Babylon (now referred to as Old or Coptic Cairo) at the mouth of an ancient canal that once connected the Nile to the Red Sea. But it was the 7th-century Arab invaders who can be said to have founded the city we know today with their encampment at Fustat, just north of Old Cairo. The Arabs took over a land that had already been occupied by the Greeks, the Persians, and the Romans.

In the millennium that followed 'Amr's conquest, the city was ruled by the Fatimids (969-1171), the Mamluks (1250-1517), and the Ottomans (1517-1798), and then experienced 150 years of French and British colonial administration until the revolution of 1952 finally returned power to Egyptian hands.

What makes Cairo unique is that each new ruler, rather than destroying what he found, simply built a new city next to the old one. Thus you can follow the progression of history by tracing a path from Old Cairo in the south, curving north through Fustat, east to Islamic Cairo, and then west to the colonial Downtown district until you reach Maydan Tahrir ( Liberation Square), where it has settled for the moment.

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