Conquering Al-Qahira: a Walk Through Old Cairo

The Arabic invaders named the city 'al-Qahira', 'The Conqueror', in commemoration of Islam's victory in the tenth century. Indeed, it has seen victorious regimes throughout its history - Pharoanic, Sudanese, Macedonian, Roman, Islamic, French and British to name but some. As a lone traveller however, the odds are pretty much stacked against you.

Cairo can be an intimidating place. Downtown is a multi-layered maelstrom of concrete, flyovers, speeding cars and blaring horns. Attempting to cross the streams of vehicles without the help of traffic lights or traffic policemen is thoroughly intimidating - I froze and got stranded in the middle of the Corniche for ten minutes! Further east into the old Islamic core is a narrow winding maze where it is hard to get your bearings. It sometimes feels as though every person is out to get something from you - badgering salesmen, fare-inflating taxi drivers, all hectoring you. And when a seemingly friendly face turns out to be a con-man, that can damage your opinion of them even further. The bakseesh, tha sales pitches, the jam of people heel to toe down Sikket al-Badestan, and then the constant blare of taxi horns... I swear the cacophany of Cairo resonates on exactly the same frequency as a nervous breakdown.

Yet breaching this alien world can be an incredibly rewarding experience. Some memories will stick in your mind, be they the intricate arabesque decorations inside a peaceful mosque, the view over Cairo from the toppermost tier of the Bab Zwayla gatehouse, or the contemplation of how long it must have taken a craftsman to carve even the simplest mashrabiya screen.

'Islamic Cairo' is a strange phrase. Egypt is of course a Muslim country. In using that phrase I am referring to the historic eastern sections of the city, spreading between the faded splendour of 19th-century Downtown, and the Muqqatam Hills. This is the area nominated as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, where streets are unpaved, mosques and madrassas cluster thickly, and life within the great city walls seemingly continues much as it did under the Mamlukes

Touring the Khan el-Khalili is an over-rated experience in my view. Likewise the mosques of Mohammed Ali and al-Hakim are mostly modern reconstructions. Far better is the austere Ibn Tulun mosque, the oldest in Egypt, and the pretty Sultan al-Nasir in the Citadel. Al-Azhar, which claims to be the oldest university in the world, is also meant to be very interesting - it is only open Sunday-Thursday though, so I missed out. For LE10 the Bab Zwayla is a bargain. Other good views can be obtained from the patio outside the Citadel's Police Museum. And the Gayer-Anderson Museum gives a glimpse into the life that the privileged classes of Cairo used to enjoy (and a much more charming one than the bare rooms of the Beit al-Suhaymi).

Quick Tips:

If you are going to be walking during the day there are two essentials you need. The first is a hat. While the souks between the two gates are largely shaded, the direct heat from overhead as you circumnavigate the bulk of the Citadel can fry your brains very quickly. The second is water. Even if you are under shade, the temperature is still hot. Furthermore, by walking you are being active, and will most probably sweat. This will mean that you get dehydrated. I got through a litre of water between Ibn Tulun and Midan el-Hussein.

Some form of general map is also useful, even if just one from a guidebook. Streets are not usually named (certainly not in English), but they are useful to help you get your bearings.

I have given you some suggestions on where to break up the day for lunch. The heaviest concentration of eateries clusters around Sharia al-Azhar and Midan el-Hussein. For the adventurous, the area around Bab Zwayla (Sharia Ahmed Maher) is good for street food. If you can find it, I would definately recommend koshary, an unusual but tasty confection of macaroni, noodles, rice and lentils.

Of course, I think the best suggestion would be - be on your guard. This is particularly the case if any young men with good English approach you at Midan Salah al-Din and inform you that your chosen destination is temporarily closed!

Having said that, do not be afraid to explore and find your own highlights. It may all seem intimidating, but I did not come across anyone who meant me harm. The worst you will get is emotional pressure for bakseesh, a purchase etc. And when haggling, remember - you are in control. If you are not offered what you see as a fair price, you can always walk away.

Best Way To Get Around:

I have deliberately written this journal as a walking tour, as that is what I did. To be honest, although this took me the majority of the day I would say that this was the best way of stringing together these sites. For starters, many of these locations could not be accessed by any other form of transport. The route along Sharia al-Muizz from Bab Zwayla to Bab al-Futuh (i.e. among the souks of the walled old city) is pretty much impassable other than on foot. Of course, there are access roads in - Sharia Ahmed Maher for Bab Zwayla, Sharia al-Azhar for Khan el-Khalili, and Sharia Galal for the northern gates and Mosque of al-Hakim. But a continuous route I feel is the best way of tying together a tour. That way you get to pick up all the local colour en route, and have a better chance of interacting with locals - for good or ill!

Plus, as written, there are very few main roads to cross over. Sharia al-Azhar is spanned by a pedestrian overpass. Your only issues will be around Midan Salah al-Din. My only advice is this: show no fear. If you think you can possibly make it across the lane, then go for it. Stride boldly - the traffic will probably slow. Under no circumstances should you shilly-shally or have a crisis of confidence. Cairene drivers do not know how to respond to that, so you are much safer if you are brazen about crossing the road!

To get to one of your start points, taxis are plentiful and cheap. If you are anywhere within the city centre do not budget for any more than LE10 ("'ashara guiney")per trip. But watch where you are when you flag them down, lest they try to charge you 'stupid tax'. I flagged down a taxi outside the Sheraton Hotel on the west bank in Dokki. Asked how much to Ibn Tulun, the driver quoted LE40. I replied that I would only pay ten. The driver accepted with a smile. (To be honest, following HobWahid's advice I would have offered eight, but I didn't have the change!) Mind you, he did then have to ask passers-by for directions five times! Taxi trips are an... experience. I had one taxi where the passenger seat was not actually attached to the floor, and which kept sliding back and forth when the friver accelerated or braked. Another purposefully aimed for a traffic cop, only to veer away at the last minute: "Is okay - my friend" he explained.

Compared to the chaos aboveground, Cairo has a wonderful Metro system - clean, regular, and cheap (a LE1 flat fare). Mahmoud Naguib is the stop nearest Islamic Cairo. From there Sharia Hassan al-Akbar leads towards Bab Zwayla - though none of the streets are named (at least, not in English anyway). Note that the first couple of carriages on any train are reserved for women - a possible boon for female travellers!

El-Dahan is a perfectly decent no frills place on the eastern end of the maelstrom that is the Muski, near Midan el-Hussein. Considering its location you'd think it would be a nightmare. In actual fact its pretty sedate. Fans waft cool air and there are several areas for seating - the ground floor where the grill and range is located, the mezzanine where I sat overlooking the lower level, and a higher floor which I did not venture up to - I have a feeling it might have been an open-air terrace. Though to be honest after trudging through Cairo for five hours I was quite grateful for the cool shade, even if the inside was a little smoky from the grilling meat. My first drink I think I downed in one!

The food is essentially traditional Egyptian fare. With a view over a man chopping fresh meat on a block and then tossing it on to the grill to sizzle over the flames, I just had to go for something meaty however. What I plumped for was a quarter kilo of kebab and kofta mix, to be served with green salad and pitta. When it came the freshly grilled meat hit the spot immediately, stuffing it into the pitta with the corainder leaf-topped salad. To be honest, i could maybe have done with more - maybe half a kilo?

End cost? A quarter kilo of meat, plus salad, pitta, and two bottles of water, all for LE28. So that amounts to around £2.50 in sterling. What a deal. It certainly fortified me to step out once more into the madness that is Khan el-Khalili.

Gad is located not far from the crossroads of the pedestrian Sharia al-Muizz which cuts through Cairo's bazaars, and the heavily trafficked Sharia al-Azhar. Set at an angle on a corner it looks a bit grimy from the outside; inside however it is lovely.

The ground floor of Gad is mainly a take-away with a few tables. Trios of women seem to stop here for fruit juice and pastries; workmen come just to pick up grub. If you are here for a meal, you will be directed upstairs, to a conservatory-type affair - a full-length uPVC window looks down over the lower level. The door is carefully shut to preserve the benefits of the air conditioning.

The food is slightly more expensive than at el-Dahan. There a meal and two drinks cost LE24. Here a meal and two drinks totted up to LE45. The meal alone was LE25. However, it was a very satisfying meal. There is a variety of tempting looking staples on the menu here, from shawarma to burgers to Alexandrian-style liver! I went for shish tawouk - three skewers of tasty chicken kebab. The other costs came as extras - salad and bread. I was a bit disgruntled that bread cost extra. However, in its favour I have to say that the bread here was the best I had during my entire stay in Egypt. It came in the form of poppy-seed pitta pockets, still warm from the oven. I had got through half of it by the time my kebabs arrived! The food was uniformly of a very high quality.

In fact, my only real complaint would be the hassle it took to leave. It took thirty minutes, which saw me asking three different people, to finally get the bill.

The Mosque of Ibn Tulun is an appropriate place to start any exploration of Islamic Cairo, as it is the earliest surviving mosque in Egypt. Ahmed Ibn Tulun was appointed governor of the settlement of Fustat in 868 by the Iraqi Abassids. In turn Ibn Tulun declared his independence, and his Tulunid dynasty ruled his new city of al-Qitai until 905. This mosque, based upon that of Samarra in Iraq, was the devotional heart of his regime.

South of the Citadel, the Mosque of Ibn Tulun seems rarely visited by the tourist swarms that clog the arteries of Khan el-Khalili. Indeed, my taxi driver did not particularly know where it was. He had to ask passers-by for directions five times as he drove through slums of ruined buildings, tents pitched in middens, and bearded and robed men selling cauliflowers from the back of horse-drawn carts. The lack of tourists is in many ways a shame, as the brutal austerity of Ibn Tulun's mosque is quietly impressive.

From the street there isn't much mosque to see. You are confronted with a long blank wall, topped with a lacy frosting of geometric designs. This is the 'ziyada' (enclosure) - it separates the holiness of the mosque from the bustle of the material world. Up the steps you come across a vast courtyard encircled by a ninth-century portico. This courtyard, 92m square, was designed to enable the entire (male) population of al-Qitai to worship at once. This is a mosque of the desert tribes, austere, open to the fierce sun which bleaches everything to bone. Centred at its heart is a later (thirteenth century) fountain under a squared dome. Entrance is free, though you are expected to head over to the left, where you are required to exchange your shoes for felt slippers. This is also free.

Leaving, I was approached by the smart white-uniformed policeman who started chatting to me. Taking me around the side of the mosque (to the right as you approach it from the road) he showed me the mosque's unusual minaret. It is unusual in that its spiral staircase encircles the outside of the minaret. From the top of the minaret, an exposed canopy with not much in the way of guard rails (so parents with kids, maybe look for another minaret to ascend!) you can see down into the polo-field of the courtyard. Lone figures walking across are dwarfed by its immensity, their movements an affront to its purpose. Indeed, earlier I had felt nervous venturing out from the shade of the portico across the stark expanse of open ground to reach the central fountain. You can also see across to the much-later Mosque of Muhammed Ali atop the Citadel to the east. A spot of bakseesh is expected for this guidance.

Exiting the Ibn Tulun Mosque turn right before you exit the ziyada. A narrow stepped passage leads through to the Gayer Anderson-Museum (LE30). This a superbly beautiful evocation of a long-vanished Cairo and I would really encourage a visit.

Formerly known as Beit al-Kritiliya, "the House of the Cretan Woman", the museum is actually composed of two houses abutting the mosque. One dates from the sixteenth century, the other from the eighteenth. Major Gayer-Anderson settled in Cairo after his retirement from military service. He seems to have been one of that breed of educated British gentlemen who fell for their posting in the age of Empire and never went home - similar to the British servicemen who insisted on 'staying on' (in the title of Paul Scott's novel) in India post-independence, or 'Glubb Pasha' who commanded the Jordanian army until the late '50s. Here Gayer-Anderson could combine his love of orientalism with a stratified social structure that was dying out in 1930s England. Here he could reside in opulence with servants (whom he genuinely seemed to like from the letters displayed on the walls), and enjoy his privileged position. Perhaps the most psychologically-penetrating exhibit is a self-portrait of the Major clad in a pharoanic head-dress...

If that sounds a little critical, then I apologise. In fact Gayer-Anderson deserves our respect for salvaging a quite remarkable collection of beautiful furnishings from across the oriental world. Not only are Egyptian art and crafts exhibited here, but also work from other traditions - Persian, Syrian, Turkish, Indian. Certainly the Damascene bedroom is quite stunning - a jewellery-box of lacquered Syrian accoutrements framing a spindly (and somewhat rickety-looking) bed. There is another room kitted out in a Persian style. For while there are a few cases of 'typical' museum pieces - ancient Egyptian gewgaws, and Roman-era statuettes - the most noteworthy thing is that this was a place of residence. Major Gayer-Anderson liked being surrounded by beautiful objets d'art, but he expected them to be functional. Hence the cool tiled reception hall on the ground floor, further cooled by low fountains creating a restful ambiance (the watchful will recognise it is a location from Roger Moore's 'The Spy Who Loved Me') The upper stories are partitioned with ornate 'mashrabiya' (carved wooden screens) shading the interior from the scalding Egyptian sun. Mashrabiya also decorates the harim, the women's quarters, so that female members of an Islamic household could see out to the street or down onto the men entertaining below, and not themselves be seen. In fact this leads to one of the most special moments. A guide showed me a cupboard built into a corner. He opened it - empty. A flick of a latch, and this time the entire cupboard swung out to reveal a screened balcony overlooking the fountained main hall.

Further screened terraces overlooked internal lightwell courtyards. Low chairs and tables marked where the Major would take his morning tea. The roof is again marked with a maze-like mashrabiya bower looking down onto the street and across to the Ibn Tulun mosque. James Bond had a fight here I recalled. His opponent was eventually thrown through the screens and off the roof - I only hope they were reconstructions!

For LE30 (and a tip for the guide) I can't really fault a visit to the Gayer-Anderson Museum. What becomes clear is a view of a prosperous Englishman of a certain class, but with a non-condescending love of the historic east, a shrewd eye, and impeccable taste. The house is not a sterile environment; instead the personality of its owner and the paraphenalia of his life provide a warmth, and show that Islamic arts were decorative, yes, but also intensely practical and functional.

The Citadel really is the crown of Old Cairo. Fortified in the twelfth-century by Salah al-Din (known in the west as Saladin, of Crusades fame), the walled compound perches atop a rocky outcrop just off the western edge of the arid Muqqatam Hills that have long provided a natural eastern limit to Cairo's expansion (and which now bristle with military equipment). A visit treats you to an awesome view over the dun huddle of Islamic Cairo, minarets piercing the smog. It also holds two mosques of particular interest - the ostentatious Mosque of Mohammed Ali that towers over the city, and the smaller and prettier Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir.

The close-packed eastern section of Cairo is devoid of Metro lines, so the easiest way to reach the Citadel is to take a taxi and ask for 'al-Qalaa'. Even if you are over on the west bank of the Nile, do not agree to pay any more than LE10. This will have you deposited by the main entrance on Sharia Salah Salem.

Of course, I was walking, so from Ibn Tulun and the Gayer-Anderson Museum I headed east along Sharia Ibn Tulun. This disgorges you at Midan Salah al-Din, one of Cairo's major intersections, where taxis and trucks whizz past. Three mosques punctuate the Midan - the large Rifai and Sultan Hassan to the west, and the smaller Mahmudiyya to the north. To the east rises the bulk of the Citadel. There is no public entrance here now, but you can see the exterior of the Bab al-Azab. It was here that Mohammed Ali ruthlessly consolidated his grab for power in 1811. Having invited the ruling Mamlukes to dinner at the Citadel, Ali saw them off, only to trap them in the narrow confines of the gate and slaughter them as they left. Now all that you can access are some low crumbling bastions, ripe with the smell of urine and faeces (watch out for needles underfoot).

On foot you must trudge around the southern edge of the Citadel down Salah al-Din and Salah Salem. You cannot miss the sloping road leading up to the gatehouse. Entrance is LE40, though there are often queues as you pass through the checkpoints. Inside the way leads left past souvenir stands to the al-Gawhera Palace, then right down a long straight enclosed road to the Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir.

The Mosque of Sultan al-Nasir is a pretty little thing, blessedly plain compared to the grandiose Mohammed Ali. After removing my shoes, a guide came up to show me items of interest. He explained that when this mosque was built in the 14th-century it was modelled on that of Cordoba in Spain. He pointed out that the columns that surrounded the courtyard were reused from older structures as you could see from the different capitols - pharoanic, Greek, Coptic Christian. Here was stone from Aswan, here was Italian Carrera marble (indeed the mosque may once have approached the same level of gaudiness as that of Mohammed Ali; once it was panelled with marble, but that panelling was stripped and hoiked off to Turkey by the evocatively named 'Selim the Grim'). Instead my guide showed me the wooden minbar (pulpit). This was constructed of a series of carefully tesellated pieces, each intricately carved in Islamic designs. Above the banded stonework the dome gleamed like jade. The man was so informative, and so clearly proud of the mosque, that I happily handed over a tip without being prompted. Of all the mosques I visited in Cairo, I think this one, with its intimate proportions, was my favourite.

Turning right out of the mosque you see the bombastic entance way to the Military Museum, its approach lined with tanks. I did not enter here, but if you pass through the arch there is a passage to your right that allows to go further into the quieter and less visited Northern Enclosure of the Citadel.

If you turn left instead you can climb up to the highest point, crowned by the Mosque of Sultan Ali. This Mosque can be seen from any minaret in the old town, its huge dome shining in the sunlight and its two pencil-thin minarets standing in stark contrast. On closer inspection I have to admit I found it gaudy and ostentatious. The intricacy and craftsmanship exhibited in the al-Nasir is not present in this 19th-century offering. Instead Ali went for scale. Inside tour parties slump across the ill-matched carpets below overly grandiose chandaliers. behind a grill to one side lies the white marble tomb of the Sultan. The whole thing seemed more reminiscent of a theatre lobby than a place of worship.

To be fair, I did like its courtyard (accessed through the mosque), even if it was slightly chintzy. A narrow clasically-inspired colonnade rings the marble space. A shaded ablutions fountain stands in the middle. There is also an ornate clock-tower, a gift from Louis Philippe of France. The clock was a swap for the obelisk which now stands in Paris' Place de la Concorde, and has apparently never worked, a fitting tribute for Mohammed Ali, a man who managed to mix instinctive barbarism (as seen in his slaughter of the Mamlukes) with a desire to ap