Founding of Cairo (969): The Fatimid City of al-Qahira

The founding of Cairo in 969 created the walled royal city of al-Qahira, built by the Fatimid caliphs after their army conquered Egypt. Laid out by the general Jawhar al-Siqilli just north of the older capital of Fustat, it became the seat of a Shia caliphate that rivalled Baghdad. Over the following centuries the palace city grew into Cairo, the largest city in the Arab world.

Background: the Fatimids look east

The Fatimid Caliphate was proclaimed in Ifriqiya (modern Tunisia) in 909 by Abd Allah al-Mahdi, who claimed descent from the Prophet Muhammad through his daughter Fatima. The Fatimids were Ismaili Shia Muslims and rejected the authority of the Sunni Abbasid caliphs in Baghdad. From the start they aimed to rule the whole Islamic world.

Egypt, rich from the Nile and its trade, was the natural first step. Fatimid armies invaded it in 914–915 and again in 919–921, but both campaigns failed. Egypt was then ruled by the Ikhshidid dynasty, nominally loyal to Baghdad, and from 946 effectively by the regent Abu al-Misk Kafur, a former slave from Africa.

The conquest of Egypt

Kafur died in 968, leaving Egypt divided between quarrelling factions. Low Nile floods had brought famine and high prices, and the Abbasids were too weak to help. The fourth Fatimid caliph, al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah, had prepared carefully, building up money, supplies and wells along the coastal route.

In February 969 a large army left the Fatimid capital area near Kairouan under the command of Jawhar. He was a former slave of European origin, usually called al-Siqilli (“the Sicilian”), who had already won major campaigns in the Maghreb. Medieval sources put his army at around 100,000 men, a figure that may be inflated.

The notables of Fustat negotiated a guarantee of safety (aman) that promised to respect property and religious practice. Some Ikhshidid troops resisted near Giza, but they were defeated, and in early July 969 Jawhar entered Fustat. The Friday sermon was soon read in the name of al-Mu’izz instead of the Abbasid caliph.

Laying out al-Qahira

Jawhar immediately began a new city on open ground north-east of Fustat, between the Nile and the Muqattam hills. According to a famous story, astrologers stretched ropes hung with bells around the planned site so that work could begin at an auspicious moment, but a crow landed on a rope and set the bells ringing early. The planet Mars, al-Qahir, was said to be in the ascendant, giving the city its name. The tale is told only by later writers and is best treated as legend.

The city was first called al-Mansuriyya, after an earlier Fatimid capital in Tunisia. When al-Mu’izz arrived it was renamed al-Qahira al-Mu’izziyya, “the Victorious City of al-Mu’izz”. It formed a roughly square enclosure a little over one kilometre per side, surrounded by mud-brick walls.

At its centre stood the caliph’s Great Eastern Palace, later facing a Western Palace across an open square called Bayn al-Qasrayn (“between the two palaces”). A main street ran north to south through the city, the ancestor of today’s al-Muizz Street. Around it lay quarters (harat) assigned to the army’s different groups, such as Berber Kutama soldiers and the Zuwayla Berbers, who gave their name to the gate Bab Zuwayla.

In 970 Jawhar began the city’s congregational mosque, al-Azhar, completed in 972. It became the main religious and teaching centre of the new capital.

The caliph arrives

Jawhar governed Egypt for four years, putting down opposition and repelling an invasion by the Qarmatians, an Ismaili group from eastern Arabia that rejected the Fatimids. In 973 al-Mu’izz left North Africa, entrusting the Maghreb to his Zirid allies, and travelled to Egypt with his court, his treasury and the coffins of his ancestors.

He entered al-Qahira in June 973. From then on Cairo was the capital of the Fatimid caliphate, which at its height controlled Egypt, Syria, Palestine, the Hejaz with Mecca and Medina, and for a time Sicily and North Africa.

A royal city beside a commercial city

Fatimid Cairo was a closed city for the caliph’s household, officials and troops. Ordinary Egyptians, merchants and craftsmen lived mainly in Fustat, which remained the economic heart of Egypt and one of the great trading cities of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean.

The Fatimids built lavishly. The Mosque of al-Hakim was begun in 990 and finished in 1013, and the small al-Aqmar Mosque was built in 1125. Between 1087 and 1092 the vizier Badr al-Jamali, an Armenian general, rebuilt the walls in stone and slightly enlarged the city. His three surviving gates, Bab al-Nasr, Bab al-Futuh and Bab Zuwayla, are among the finest examples of medieval military architecture in the Middle East.

Older capitals on the same site

Al-Qahira was not the first capital in this part of the Nile valley. The Roman fortress of Babylon stood near the river long before Islam, and in 641 the Arab commander Amr ibn al-As founded Fustat beside it as the capital of Muslim Egypt. In 750 the Abbasids added a government quarter, al-Askar, to the north-east, and in 870 the governor Ahmad ibn Tulun built his own palace city, al-Qata’i, of which only his great mosque survives.

Each new ruling group thus built its own seat of power beside the older town, and the Fatimid city followed this pattern. What made al-Qahira different was its size, its walls and the fact that it became the capital of an independent caliphate rather than of a province. Over time all these settlements merged, and the name Cairo, derived from al-Qahira through Italian, came to cover them all.

Key people

• Jawhar al-Siqilli (died 992): Fatimid general who conquered Egypt and laid out al-Qahira and al-Azhar.
• Al-Mu’izz li-Din Allah (ruled 953–975): fourth Fatimid caliph, who planned the conquest and moved his court to Cairo.
• Kafur (died 968): regent and ruler of Ikhshidid Egypt, whose death opened the way for the Fatimids.
• Badr al-Jamali (died 1094): vizier who rebuilt Cairo’s walls and gates in stone.

Consequences and legacy

The Fatimid move to Egypt shifted the centre of their empire from the western Mediterranean to the Nile and created a lasting rival to Baghdad. Cairo became a major centre of Ismaili learning and of trade between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean.

In 1168, as a Crusader army threatened Egypt, Fustat was largely burned on the orders of the vizier Shawar to keep it from falling to the enemy. In 1171 Saladin ended the Fatimid caliphate and opened al-Qahira to the general public. He began the Citadel on the Muqattam spur in 1176, and under the Ayyubids and Mamluks the old palace city and the remains of Fustat merged into one great metropolis, which also took in older monuments such as the Mosque of Ibn Tulun.

Timeline

• 909: The Fatimid caliphate is proclaimed in Ifriqiya.
• 968: Death of Kafur, ruler of Egypt.
• 969, February: Jawhar’s army sets out for Egypt.
• 969, July: Jawhar enters Fustat and begins laying out the new city.
• 970: Construction of al-Azhar Mosque begins.
• 973, June: Caliph al-Mu’izz arrives and makes al-Qahira his capital.
• 1087–1092: Badr al-Jamali rebuilds the walls and gates in stone.
• 1171: Saladin ends the Fatimid caliphate.

Why it matters

Al-Qahira began as a private palace city for a dynasty, yet it gave its name and its core to one of the world’s great capitals. The Fatimid street plan, mosques and gates still shape historic Cairo more than a thousand years later.