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In Egypt, Priceless History Is Paved Over for Traffic and Tourism

Burial sites and mausoleums are being razed, costing Cairo a millennium’s worth of heritage in exchange for seldom-used restaurants, cafes and hotels

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In Egypt, Priceless History Is Paved Over for Traffic and Tourism
Demolition work on Qanswa Street in the Mamluk Desert. (Michel Hanna)

At the foothills of Mount Mokattam in Cairo is a cemetery whose almost two-millennia history is that of Egypt’s itself. It was at first a burial place for Christians, who wanted to keep it so: When Islamic rule arrived in Egypt, 1,400 years ago, the Coptic ruler of the time wrote to the new Muslim representative of the caliphate and offered him 70,000 dinars for the site (a dinar was worth 4.25 grams of gold at the time, so this equates to about $12 million today). The Mamluk historian al-Maqrizi recounts the story in his seminal book “Al-Mawa’iz wa-l-I’tibar fi dhikr al-Khutat wa-l-Athar” (“Wisdoms and Consideration on Scrolls and Histories”), naming the ruler al-Muqawqis, who is probably the Greek Melkite Patriarch Kirolos in the Christian sources. Al-Muqawqis apparently offered the high price to keep the area Christian because “its description in the books is that it contains plants [trees] of Paradise.” Amr ibn al-Aas wrote to the caliph, Omar ibn al-Khattab, asking for his advice. The caliph wrote back, saying: “Only the believers know these plants of Paradise, so bury in it those of the believers who died before you, and do not sell them for anything.”

And so the area became an Islamic cemetery, along with another area, known as Qarafa, both in dry desert locales far from the Nile. Over time, the two cemeteries expanded south, north and east until they merged to form what is now known as the City of the Dead. This vast cemetery is divided into parts such as the Greater Qarafa, the Lesser Qarafa, the “Mujawarin” (“Adjacent”), the Caliphs’ Tombs, the Qaytbay Cemetery and the Mamluk Desert. It stretches over 7 miles, now fragmented by modern road projects.

Millions of commoners, sheikhs, scholars, saints, writers, poets, sultans, princes, pashas and beys were buried in this desert, creating a complex and overlapping historical tapestry. In the 19th century, pashas and notable figures built funerary edifices where they would be buried with their families. These were adjacent to those built by the Mamluks and often borrowed Mamluk architectural elements, adding to the cemetery’s richness and diversity. As people became wealthier, they would build more luxurious, spacious and beautiful tombs, planting trees to create lush oases in the desert.

But now, this and many other historical sites in Cairo are at risk, all in a drive to develop the city in a way that seems to disregard its rich history. Unique sites spanning millennia are disappearing in front of our eyes, despite regular social media storms. Development has always been both friend and foe of archaeology, uncovering previously unknown sites yet causing destruction in the process. But what is happening in Cairo is taking this destructive element to a whole new level. And at risk is not just the history but also all the practices and rituals that have developed around honoring the dead.

Islamic cemeteries in Egypt differ from their counterparts in most countries, where burials are typically underground. In Egypt, the cemeteries continue the country’s ancient tradition of significant funerary architecture and spaces that consider the needs of the living who visit the dead during religious seasons and holidays.

The tomb of the powerful Pharaonic vizier Mereruka, located in the town of Saqqara in Giza, has 33 rooms, some of which were for the living to use, especially during the Beautiful Valley Festival, dedicated to remembering the dead. During this festival, people visited their deceased family members, placed flowers on graves to revive their spirits, and ate, drank and slept in the cemeteries.

We see the same customs, 2,500 years later, during the Roman era in Egypt. In the catacombs of Kom el Shoqafa, west of Alexandria, a multilevel underground cemetery, there is a triclinium, or banquet hall, where on special occasions the family of the deceased gathered to eat as they honored the dead.

And the custom persisted in Egypt even after the country’s conversion to Islam. Numerous books have been published on the practice of visiting Qarafa, perhaps the most famous being a 15th-century book by Shams al-Din Muhammad ibn al-Zayat detailing the arrangement of visits to the Greater and Lesser Qarafa. Even today, the tradition of visiting graves remains widespread, especially among poorer social classes.

Cemeteries still include spaces for people to use during visits to their ancestors, some of which can last for an entire week. There are also places for guards and their families to stay. Religious festivals may be held there to celebrate sheikhs, saints and righteous people, and visits are frequent, especially on Fridays, making it a place for both the dead and the living.

But neither the past nor the present is enough to protect cemeteries from the drive for development, despite waves of protest from civil society. Nor have the extensive regulations to protect historical monuments and areas provided any protection from the bulldozers. The past few years have seen an ever-increasing destruction of Cairo’s former identity.

The historic neighborhood of Heliopolis is a case in point. Originally founded as a “garden city” in 1905, Heliopolis has now seen the bulk of its gardens removed because of construction aimed at alleviating traffic congestion and facilitating access to the new administrative capital. Civil society fought back but ultimately lost. These projects buried heritage buildings, uprooted green spaces and, within a few months, transformed the neighborhood into wide, unwalkable traffic corridors. Once a prestigious district in Cairo, the garden city became a gray, inhospitable landscape.

While bridges were being built over Heliopolis gardens, bulldozers swept through much of the Al Basatin Cemetery, south of Cairo. The cemeteries around Ain Al Sira Lake Park were removed for “development.” Among the landmarks lost was the Mashhad al-Tabataba, the mausoleum of the Tabataba family, dating to around 943 CE, the last archaeological trace of the Ikhshidid dynasty in Egypt. The site became a parking lot after its mausoleums and upper parts were dismantled and relocated near the National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. But many experts believe that moving such monuments, such as the Temple of Abu Simbel when the Aswan Dam was built, isn’t saving them because part of their history and value lies in their original location.

These removals were part of the government’s Civilizations Axis, a major intersection designed to facilitate access to the newly built National Museum of Egyptian Civilization. The axis includes a bridge with foundations that have been dug through the ground of the cemeteries, coming extremely close to the Imam al-Faqih al-Layth bin Saad Mosque and shrine. Al-Layth was a revered jurist, and many Egyptian Muslims seek blessings from his shrine. The project also affected the Ibn Tulun aqueducts, built in the ninth century CE to deliver water to Al Basatin, one of five remaining monuments from the Tulunid era.

And to add insult to injury, three years after the Civilization Axis opened in early 2021, few cars have used it, raising doubts about the fundamental reasons for its construction, let alone the cost of the enterprise in financial and historical terms.

After completing the Civilization Axis, construction moved north to Eastern Qarafa, home to mausoleums and beautiful buildings from the Mamluk era, to construct another large intersection, the Paradise Axis.

Part of the demolition work. (Michel Hanna)

In July 2020, a wave of anger erupted on social media after photos surfaced showing bulldozers demolishing parts of Qansuh Street, one of the most beautiful streets in Eastern Qarafa. This street is home to the mausoleum of Abu Said Qansuh, a Mamluk sultan who ruled in the late 15th century CE, and many ancient and prestigious tombs. Among the demolished structures were the tombs of Ahmed Abboud Pasha, an industrialist and one of the wealthiest individuals in Egypt during the royal era who helped establish railway networks with Palestine and Syria, and Ahmed Lutfi el-Sayed, a prominent thinker and philosopher of the 19th-century Nahda movement (also known as the Arab Awakening or Enlightenment), along with dozens of other burial sites. Cemeteries on parallel streets, including Al-Ashraf Street, were also demolished to allow for expansion.

After subsequent widespread media coverage, demolition plans were scaled back and the width of the planned axis was reduced, but with the new plans still allowing for much damage. And it turns out that despite the government backing down, the heritage is now even more at risk. The minister of housing, utilities and urban communities issued a decision to remove four of the damaged or destroyed cemeteries from the “register of buildings and facilities with a distinctive architectural style” in the Cairo governorate. This register includes buildings of architectural or historical value or those associated with famous figures and is intended to protect them from demolition or vandalism. Two of the four cemeteries had been registered as historical sites in 2019, only to be removed three years later. This suggests that registering buildings as historical sites does not guarantee their protection; they can always be removed from the register and then demolished, or demolished first and removed from the record afterward. In response to the minister’s decision, Ayman Wanas, chair of the permanent committee surveying buildings and structures of distinctive architectural style in East Cairo, resigned from his position in August 2023.

No sooner had the uproar caused by the demolition work in the Mamluk Desert subsided than the government moved development projects south to the Sayyida Aisha area and its surroundings. In November 2021, the government announced plans to demolish 2,700 tombs. Multiple historic buildings have been dismantled to make way for development, including the minarets of two 14th-century mosques (Qawsun al-Saqi, built in 1336, and the Sultaniyya Mausoleum, built in 1350) as well as two 16th-century mosques, both in Sayyida Aisha Square — Al-Ghuri mosque, built in 1509, and Mesih Mehmed Pasha mosque, built in 1585. A few steps away from the square, the Arab al-Yasar area was demolished to make way for shops and restaurants.

Surveyors were deployed in the cemeteries of Sayyida Nafisa and Imam al-Shafii, south of Cairo, marking thousands of graves for removal. The removal included the graves of and the stunning edifices that commemorate many famous figures in Egyptian and Islamic history: Imam Warsh, known for his Quran recitation style; Mahmoud Sami Al-Baroudi, the prime minister and poet known as the “lord of the sword and the pen” (1839-1904); Muhammad Mahmoud Pasha, another prime minister (1878-1941); artist Youssef Wahba (1898-1982); and “prince of poets” Ahmed Shawqi (1868-1932), to name only a few. The remains of Queen Farida, the first wife of King Farouk, were disinterred and transferred to Al-Rifai Mosque to facilitate the demolition.

In Sayyida Nafisa’s tombs also lies the tomb of Ali Pasha Mubarak (1823-1893), one of the most important figures in Cairo’s urban planning in the 19th century and author of the encyclopedic reference book The New Compromising Plans, a comprehensive atlas of Egypt’s cities throughout the ages. It is as if the modern planner has deliberately designed the road to go over the remains of the most famous planner in Cairo’s history, symbolically severing ties with the city’s ancient past.

The demolition of the cemetery of Sayyida Nafisa began in the first half of 2023. However, numerous objections arose. The media outcry led to repeated changes in the locations of the demolition signs, but each time the path was altered, it clashed with other historical burial sites in the area. In June 2023, the president assigned a committee to study the project. The committee recommended against wholesale demolition, but the project’s overseers ignored its opinion, and the bulldozers began their work at the ancient edifices and shrines of Imam al-Shafii. In protest, some committee members resigned.

Around the same time, another axis project emerged, the Yasser Rizk Axis, named for the former editor-in-chief of Akhbar al-Youm. Again, the bulldozers appeared, this time in dozens of cemeteries in the Abajiya area. The tomb of famous writer Taha Hussein was initially scheduled for demolition, but social pressure and statements from his family about their desire to transport his remains outside Egypt to ensure that “the sanctity of the dead” is not violated again, led to the dean of Arabic literature’s gravesite being excluded from demolition. However, the bridge was built, leaving Hussein’s tomb alone in a large, empty area under the bridge. Other important nearby cemeteries did not receive the same consideration and were razed. These included the tomb of Youssef Siddiq, a member of the 1952 Revolution Command Council, and the tomb of Salah al-Din al-Murshidi, a martyr of the October 1973 war.

An ancient structure is isolated after the demolition of the tomb that contained it. (Michel Hanna)

After the demolition operations, many of the installations and marble tombstones from the cemeteries appeared for sale in heritage markets. Images of these demolished masterpieces sparked a new wave of anger, forcing the authorities to temporarily suspend the demolition in September 2023. Security personnel were deployed in the Imam al-Shafii cemetery, and to curb public pressure, photography was prohibited. There were reports of arrests for those wandering around or photographing in the cemeteries.

But yet again, the halt to the demolition projects did not last. In April, the Cairo governorate issued a decision to stop burying the dead in the Imam al-Shafii and Sayyida Nafisa cemeteries. Meanwhile, the historic Bab al-Nasr cemetery, located in front of the Futuh and Victory gates outside the walls of Old Cairo, began to be emptied for a parking project, in what appears to be insistence by the government to upend Cairo’s historical cemeteries.

Targeting cemeteries for demolition is not a novel practice in Egypt, both in ancient and modern times. But the current wave is more violent and intense. Generations of Egyptians have experienced similar events, such as during the construction of the Salah Salem and Al-Nasr highways, which were developed in multiple stages. In the 1950s, the first road was built when then-President Gamal Abdel Nasser ordered the minister of war, Abdel-Latif al-Baghdadi, to construct this highway, known as the Military Roadway, which opened in the 1960s.

Egyptian writer Khairy Shalabi, who spent long periods visiting the cemeteries, provides a poignant account of this process in his book “The Belly of the Cow,” published in 1995. He writes:

I was destined to witness an experience that I will never forget as long as I live. That was the process of constructing the highway. Bulldozers cut through the heart of the cemeteries with hideous, hellish cruelty, with plows that dig into the heart of the soil and throw the bones of the dead on both sides, so that the sand pits can come and trample the ground to pave it. When darkness descends on the area, flashing sparks of light emerge from the piles of dirt coming from white bones and fleshless skulls. There were teeth like jewels, and arms, legs, and coffins, some of which were fresh and not yet damaged by wear. The sight was painful and absurd, and a great sadness. The ones resting in these graves did not yet know that their flesh had been trampled underfoot. We had to do something to relieve our angry thoughts, so we formed a team, of which I was the leader, and we bought a group of slings. We began to go behind the bulldozers and collect the body parts, packing them into the slings. My body used to shiver and twitch whenever I held a skull, with strands of hair pouring out of it, buried in the dirt, and remnants of the scalp fell into the strands.

The first law regulating cemeteries in Egypt was issued on Oct. 30, 1877, during the reign of Khedive Ismail. This law included several conditions, such as cemeteries being built downwind from inhabited areas and at least 650 feet away, being located at elevated points or on hills, being surrounded by a wall that does not obstruct airflow, and being far from rivers, canals, wells and watercourses. It detailed the burial process, rules for exhuming bodies, methods of exporting bodies to other countries and receiving bodies from abroad.

Later, in 1894 during the reign of Abbas Hilmi II, another law was enacted, establishing rules for transferring cemeteries deemed harmful to public health. It gave the authority to transfer cemeteries to the minister of the interior after the general director of the health department submitted a report and obligated the government to provide free land for new cemeteries. This law did not apply to cemeteries in Cairo and Alexandria, requiring a special order for them later.

In 1928, the minister of the interior issued an amended list of Muslim cemeteries, applying to all Islamic cemeteries except those in Alexandria. These regulations prohibited using cemeteries for purposes other than burial and set rules for establishing cemeteries, such as keeping cemetery land a public utility. The fees paid by the tenant did not grant land ownership, but the building materials used remained their property. The regulations also included a few oddities, such as prohibiting public entry to cemeteries outside of funerals or known visiting times as well as forbidding wailing, self-flagellation and “zar” rituals (dancing and playing tambourines to expel demons that possess people), along with several forms of popular witchcraft and other rituals. Spending the night in cemeteries or staying two hours after sunset was also prohibited, except for recognized private guards from the police and guards appointed by committee heads. Begging inside cemeteries was forbidden.

The current law on cemeteries was issued in 1966. Its first article states, “Cemetery lands are public endowments, and they retain this status after burials are abolished for 10 years or until the remains are transferred.”

The insistence on demolishing old cemeteries seems strange, as they are some of the most beautiful Islamic burial grounds in the world. Despite the numerous roads and axes cutting into them from all directions, committees have doubted the utility of these roads, and those constructed have seen little traffic.

In late 2007, Egyptians were introduced to Cairo Vision 2050. It was said that Gamal Mubarak, who was preparing at the time to succeed his father in ruling Egypt, and his economic group were behind it. By 2008, details of the plan began to appear in the media. One of the most prominent officials responsible for Cairo Vision 2050 was Mostafa Madbouly, who was then head of the General Authority for Urban Planning and later became the minister of housing and eventually the prime minister of Egypt.

The plan treats Cairo as if it were a blank slate, with nothing but some buildings officially registered as antiquities in the records of the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities while ignoring everything else. It stipulates for the establishment of a new cemetery area and the conversion of existing cemeteries into gardens, restaurants, cafes and hotels, provided that the archaeological buildings are preserved and the rest are demolished. Project maps renamed the cemeteries of Al-Mujawarin and the Mamluk Desert overlooking Salah Salem Street as the Grand Al-Azhar Gardens. The orchard cemeteries were called the Grand Fustat Gardens, the Manshiyet Nasser area was labeled a tourist housing resort, and the Old Cairo neighborhood and the Bab Al-Nasr cemetery were designated as Al-Gamaleya Gardens. The plan also includes other ambitious projects, such as constructing a 650-foot-wide street in Matareya, east of Cairo, and the Khufu Axis project in Giza governorate, a huge boulevard nearly 2,000 feet wide and 5 miles long, requiring the demolition of numerous buildings.

These urban planning projects lack transparency and disregard the historical accumulation that the city has built over more than a millennium as well as the desires and aspirations of its residents. Instead, they exhibit a contempt for the old and an unjustified fascination with the Dubai model of relentless construction and development.

The mindset that produced Cairo Vision 2050 is the same one driving current development projects. These projects serve business owners and their investments by creating vast areas of empty, salable land in the most expensive areas of Cairo through demolition and population relocation. At the same time, they ensure the continued operation of hundreds of contracting companies. This, however, comes at the cost of losing a long span of unique human heritage, which, once lost, can never be re-created.

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