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Presentation of Cairo

Cairo (Arabic: القاهرة‎ al-Qāhira), is the capital city of Egypt, and is the largest city in Africa, and the Arab World. It is the largest metropolitan area in Egypt, and is one of the most populous in the world. Cairo has long been the center of the region's cultural and artistic life, and has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab World, earning it the name of the "Hollywood of the East". While Al-Qahirah is the official name of the city in Arabic, Egyptians often refer to it simply as Masr (the Arabic name for Egypt itself). Cairo was founded by the Fatimid Caliphate, replacing Fustat as the seat of the government, and serving as the capital of Egypt ever since.

Cairo has a population of about 8 million people, according to the 2008 population census. The number of inhabitants was about a million higher at the time of the census, but this was adjusted downwards on the 17th of April 2008 when the new government of Helwan was created from parts of the old Cairo government. Cairo's metropolitan area has a population of about 17.8 million people. Cairo is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world. It is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa.

Cairo has a mix of historical and modern cultural sights. This includes the Pyramids, the Hanging Church, Saladin's Citadel, the Virgin Mary's Tree, the Sphinx, and Heliopolis, Al-Azhar, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-A'as, Saqqara, the Cairo Tower, and the Old City. Cairo is nicknamed "The City of A Thousand Minarets".

History of Cairo

Cairo was founded in 969 AD as the royal enclosure for the Fatimid caliphs, while the actual economic and administrative capital was in nearby Fustat. Modern Cairo encompasses Fustat, as well as other previous capitals — Al-Askar and Al-Qatta'i. Fustat was established by Arab military commander 'Amr ibn al-'As following the conquest of Egypt in 641, and took over as the capital which previously was located in Alexandria. Al-Askar, located in what is now Old Cairo, was the capital of Egypt from 750 to 868. Ahmad ibn Tulun established Al-Qatta'i as the new capital of Egypt, and remained the capital until 905, when the Fustat once again became the capital. After Fustat was destroyed in 1168/1169 to prevent its capture by the Crusaders, the administrative capital of Egypt moved to Cairo, where it has remained ever since. It took four years for the General Jawhar Al Sikilli (the Sicilian) to build Cairo and for the Fatimid Calif Al Muizz to leave his old Mahdia in Tunisia and settle in the new Capital of Fatimids in Egypt.

After Memphis, Heliopolis, Giza and the Byzantine fortress of Babylon-in-Egypt, Fustat was a new city built as a military garrison for Arab troops. It was the closest central location to Arabia that was accessible to the Nile. Fustat became a regional center of Islam during the Umayyad period. It was where the Umayyad ruler, Marwan II, made his last stand against the Abbasids.

Later, during the Fatimid era, Al-Qahira (Cairo) was officially founded in 969 as an imperial capital just to the north of Fustat. Over the centuries, Cairo grew to absorb other local cities such as Fustat, but the year 969 is considered the "founding year" of the modern city. Cairo soon became a center of learning, with the library of Cairo containing as many as two million books.

In 1250, the slave soldiers or Mamluks seized Egypt and ruled from their capital at Cairo until 1517, when they were defeated by the Ottomans. By the 16th century, Cairo had high-rise apartment buildings where the two lower floors were for commercial and storage purposes and the multiple stories above them were rented out to tenants.

Napoleon's French army briefly occupied Egypt from 1798 to 1801, after which an Albanian officer in the Ottoman army named Muhammad Ali Pasha made Cairo the capital of an independent empire that lasted from 1805 to 1882. The city then came under British control until Egypt attained independence in 1922.

Sister cities with Cairo

Athens, Greece
Rome, Italy
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Tokyo, Japan
Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Hamburg, Germany
Buenos Aires, Argentina
Toronto, Canada
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Stockholm, Sweden
New York, USA
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Amman, Jordan
Istanbul, Turkey
Rabat, Morocco
Lisbon, Portugal
London, United Kingdom
Ankara, Turkey
Moscow, Russia
Beijing, China
Paris, France
Prague, Czech Republic
Chennai, India
Hanoi, Vietnam
Madrid, Spain
Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Tunis, Tunisia
Khartoum, Sudan
Baghdad, Iraq
Damascus, Syria
Algiers, Algeria
Oran, Algérie
Sétif, Algérie
Beirut, Lebanon
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