Routledge Handbook on Cairo

Nezar AlSayyad is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Architecture, Planning and Urban History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he designed and also served for two decades as Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). He is a founder and past President of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), and Editor of Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review (TDSR). Among his grants and awards are those from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Getty Center, Ford and the Graham Foundations, and a Guggenheim Distinguished Fellowship. He has authored and edited numerous books, several of which have been translated into other languages, among them Nile: Urban Histories on the Banks of a River (2019); Traditions: The Real, The Hyper, and the Virtual in the Built Environment (2014); Cairo: Histories of a City (2011); The Fundamentalist City? (2010); Cinematic Urbanism (2006); Making Cairo Medieval (2005); and Cities and Caliphs (1991).

Part 1: Histories

1.1. Cairo: The State of a City

Nezar AlSayyad

1.2. Al-Qata’iʿ: A Lost City in Cairo – Revisited

Tarek Swelim

1.3. Cairo as a Palace: Rituals of the Fatimid Caliphate

Ayman Fouad Sayyid

1.4. Building Mamluk Cairo: The Capital of a Sultanate

Omniya Abdel Barr

1.5. Coopting the Street: The Urban Character of Mamluk Architecture in Cairo

Nasser Rabbat

1.6. 1340 Years of Cairo’s Medieval Necropolis

Galila El Kadi

1.7. Policing Cairo in the Nineteenth Century

Khaled Fahmy

1.8. Khedivial Cairo: The Genesis of the Modern City and the Prospects of its Downtown

Soheir Hawas

1.9. Tahrir Square: The Roundabout and the History of Modern Cairo

Mariam Abdelazim

Part 2: Representations

2.1. The Skylines of Cairo: A Photographic Essay

Karim Badr

2.2. The Earliest Images of Cairo’s Islamic Architecture

Doris Behrens-Abouseif

2.3. Seeing Cairo Through Paris: Nineteenth Century Literary Observations by Egyptian Intellectuals

Kinda AlSamara

2.4. Sayings and Songs: On the Intangible Culture of Cairo

Ahmed O. El-Kholei

2.5. Cairo Through Her Eyes: Space and Gender Dynamics in Naguib Mahfouz’s Bayn Al-Qasrayn

Mohammad Salama

2.6. The Judge, the Officer and the Demiurge: Figures and Figurations of Old Cairo

Ann Madoeuf

2.7. Cairo on Film: The Modernity of a Cinematic City

Nezar AlSayyad

2.8. Revolutionary Cairo: The City Still Remembers

Dina Ezzat

Part 3: Discourses

3.1. The Normalization of Hijab: Islamic Reveiling in Cairo

Sherifa Zuhur

3.2. Informal Cairo: The Making of an Urban Fabric

Ahmed M. Soliman

3.3. Cairo’s Desert Backyard: The Future of an Ever-Growing Metropolis?

David Sims

3.4. (Re)Connecting with Wounded Spaces: Encountering Memory, Place and Narrative in Cairo’s Historic Landscape

Gehan Selim

3.5. An Untold Urban Narrative: Transcending Gender, Culture and Modernity in Cairo’s Old Quarters

Mohamed Gamal Abdelmonem

3.6. Rethinking Urban Transformations in Cairo: A View From ‘Middle’ Class Housing in al-Mohandiseen

Khaled Adham

3.7. Government Visions: A Planner’s Perspective on the Remaking of Cairo

Sahar Attia

3.8. The Transformation of Public Space in Post-Revolutionary Cairo: A Diary from Tahrir, 2011-2013

Mona Abaza