City of the Dead (Cairo)
Encyclopedia
The City of the Dead, or Cairo Necropolis (Qarafa, el-Arafa), is an Arabic necropolis
Necropolis
A necropolis is a large cemetery or burial ground, usually including structural tombs. The word comes from the Greek νεκρόπολις - nekropolis, literally meaning "city of the dead"...
and cemetery
Cemetery
A cemetery is a place in which dead bodies and cremated remains are buried. The term "cemetery" implies that the land is specifically designated as a burying ground. Cemeteries in the Western world are where the final ceremonies of death are observed...
below the Mokattam Hills
Mokattam
Mokattam and the Moqattam Hills, , also Muqattam and Moqattam Mountain, is the name of a hill range and a suburb in them, located in southeastern Cairo, Egypt.-Landform:...
in southeastern Cairo
Cairo
Cairo , is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life...
, Egypt
Egypt
Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...
. The people of Cairo, the Cairenes, and most Egyptians, call it el'arafa (trans. 'the cemetery'). It is a 4 miles (6.4 km) long (north-south) dense grid of tomb and mausoleum
Mausoleum
A mausoleum is an external free-standing building constructed as a monument enclosing the interment space or burial chamber of a deceased person or persons. A monument without the interment is a cenotaph. A mausoleum may be considered a type of tomb or the tomb may be considered to be within the...
structures, where some people live and work amongst the dead. Some reside here to be near ancestors, of recent to ancient lineage. Some live here after being forced from central Cairo due to urban renewal demolitions and urbanization pressures, that increased from the Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser
Gamal Abdel Nasser Hussein was the second President of Egypt from 1956 until his death. A colonel in the Egyptian army, Nasser led the Egyptian Revolution of 1952 along with Muhammad Naguib, the first president, which overthrew the monarchy of Egypt and Sudan, and heralded a new period of...
1950s on. Other residents immigrated in from the agricultural countryside, looking for work — an example of rural to urban migration in an LEDC. The poorest live in the City of the Dead slum
City of the Dead (slum)
City of the Dead is a slum at the base of Mokattam Hill on the eastern outskirts of Cairo, the capital of Egypt. The slum possibly has a population of more than half a million people. It is in the East of the city...
, and Manshiyat naser
Manshiyat naser
Manshiyat naser, also known as Garbage City, is a slum settlement at the base of Mokattam Hill on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. Its economy revolves around the collection and recycling of the city's garbage...
, which is also known as Garbage City, a center of recycling and reuse Zabbaleen
Zabbaleen
The Zabbaleen are a minority religious community of Coptic Christians who have served as Cairo's informal garbage collectors for approximately the past 70 to 80 years. Zabbaleen means "Garbage people" in Egyptian Arabic...
vendors.
Caliphate era
The founding dates back to the Arab conquest of Egypt in 642 AD. The Arab commander 'Amr ibn al-'As'Amr ibn al-'As
`Amr ibn al-`As was an Arab military commander who is most noted for leading the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640. A contemporary of Muhammad, and one of the Sahaba , who rose quickly through the Muslim hierarchy following his conversion to Islam in the year 8 AH...
founded the first Egyptian Arab capital, the city of Al Fustat, and established his family’s graveyard at the foot of the hill al Mokattam
Mokattam
Mokattam and the Moqattam Hills, , also Muqattam and Moqattam Mountain, is the name of a hill range and a suburb in them, located in southeastern Cairo, Egypt.-Landform:...
. The other tribes buried their dead within the living quartiers. The following Arab dynasties built own political citadel to the north, founding a new graveyard. The commander’s family cemetery, the Great Qarafa and the Lesser Qarafa, have been inhabited since the first centuries after the conquest. Its first resident nucleus consisted of the custodians to noble's graves and the staff in charge of the burial service as well as the Sufi mystics in their khawaniq (colleges).
During the Fatimid Caliphate, because of their Shi’ite faith, the sovereigns supported pilgrimages to Ahl al Bayt (Prophet’s family) shrines here. These pilgrimages increased the cemetery’s development to provide pligrims’ needs. The following sultan, Salah el Din, in order to unify all the four capitals within a surrounding wall, included both cemeteries in a unique urban space.
Next, the Mamluk Sultanate
Mamluk Sultanate (Cairo)
The Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt was the final independent Egyptian state prior to the establishment of the Muhammad Ali Dynasty in 1805. It lasted from the overthrow of the Ayyubid Dynasty until the Ottoman conquest of Egypt in 1517. The sultanate's ruling caste was composed of Mamluks, Arabised...
rulers originally freed slaves forming a military caste, and founded a new graveyard named Sahara, because of its desert environment, outside the city at its north-eastern border. It was also a place for military parades, such as tournaments and investiture ceremonies, as well as for processions, at which sultan and nobles took part during the religious celebrations. Some built their palaces on the main road of the cemetery in order to assist to the spectacles.
Ottoman era
With the Ottoman EmpireOttoman Empire
The Ottoman EmpireIt was usually referred to as the "Ottoman Empire", the "Turkish Empire", the "Ottoman Caliphate" or more commonly "Turkey" by its contemporaries...
(1517–1798) Egypt became a province of a vast empire with Constantinople
Constantinople
Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...
(Istanbul) as capital. During the following three centuries Egypt was ruled by pasha
Pasha
Pasha or pascha, formerly bashaw, was a high rank in the Ottoman Empire political system, typically granted to governors, generals and dignitaries. As an honorary title, Pasha, in one of its various ranks, is equivalent to the British title of Lord, and was also one of the highest titles in...
s, the sultans' representatives selected among their closest circle because of the importance of the province for agricultural and financial support. Because of the short terms of the rulers’ office, only a few of one hundred and ten pashas who administrated Ottoman Egypt had tombs here. The Cairenes were contrary to their burial abroad.
At the beginning of the sixteenth century an urban and heterogeneous community populated Al Qarafa. The economic improvements affected the urban territory of Islamic Cairo
Islamic Cairo
Islamic Cairo is a part of central Cairo noted for its historically important mosques and other Islamic monuments. It is overlooked by the Cairo Citadel....
with the birth of new neighbourhoods which caused a reduction in the utilization of the old cemetery. However since the funerary monuments were symbols of self-glorification for the upper classes in order to perpetuate own memory, their tombs were garlanded with gilded decorations with festoons, based on nature, flowers and fruits.
The necropolis, because a site of extraordinary concentration of awalya’s tombs, Sufi colleges, and madrasas, attracted many people in search of baraka (blessing). During the following centuries the Egyptian population's impoverished numbers increased. The lower stratum of middle class collapsed and moved to other peripheral zones, the fellahin, the Egyptian peasants and farmers, emigrated to the capital. Both of them crowded the poorest fringe zones as well as the City of the Dead. The newcomers changed Al Qarafa’s face from an urban district to a hybrid community of rurals and citizens.
20th century
Following the 1992 Cairo earthquake1992 Cairo earthquake
The 1992 Cairo earthquake occurred at 13:09 UTC on 12 October, with an epicenter near Dahshur, 35 km south of Cairo. The earthquake had a magnitude of 5.8, but was unusually destructive for its size, causing 545 deaths, injuring 6512 and making 50,000 people homeless...
many people were forced to move into family tombs thus adding to the number of people already living in the City of the Dead.