![]() Under successive dynasties of khalifs who rule the Islamic Empire from Iraq, three more cities were founded, each to the northeast of the previous one, which itself was either spurned or devastated. For strategic and spiritual reasons, their general, Amr, chose to found a new settlement beyond the walls of Babylon - Fustat, the "City of the Tent", which evolved into a sophisticated metropolis while Europe was in the Dark Ages. Oppressed by foreign overlords, Babylon's citizens almost welcomed the army of Islam that conquered Egypt in 641. Babylon-in-Egypt was the beginning of the tale of cities that culminates in modern Cairo. It took centuries of Persian, Greek and Roman rule to efface both cities, by which time a new fortified town had developed on the opposite bank. Meanwhile, across the Nile, there flourished a sister-city of priests and solar cults known to posterity as ancient Heliopolis. During the heydey of the Old Kingdom, vast necropolises developed along the desert's edge as the pharaohs erected ever greater funerary monuments, from the first Step Pyramid at Saqqara to the unsurpassable Pyramids of Giza. It was the first capital of pharaonic Egypt, founded (c.3100 BC) across the river and to the south. ![]() Please come and enjoy it." - Omar SharifĬairo is an agglomeration of half a dozen cities, the earliest of which came into existence 2500 years after ancient Memphis. "Marvelous and maddening, full of secrets and surprises, peopled with the whole spectrum of humanity. Introduction - Facts for the travellers - Where to go, what to see? - History: Pharaonic history -Ĭoptic history - Islamic history - Modern history - Holy Family - Useful Arabic ![]() Report on Egypt, New dimensions, new frontiers ![]()
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