Cities · a Light

Cairo was laid out as a private city for one dynasty

In 969 the Fatimid general Jawhar al-Siqilli, a former slave of Sicilian origin, took Egypt for the caliph al-Mu'izz and marked out a walled enclosure north of the existing town of Fustat. It was called al-Qahira, the victorious, and it was not built for the public: it held the palaces, the guard and the administration, and ordinary Egyptians lived outside it. Within two centuries the walls had been overtaken and the name had spread to the whole city. Europeans took al-Qahira into their languages as Cairo. Egyptians still often call it simply Misr, the name of the country itself, because for a long time the city and the country were spoken of as one thing.

Jawhar al-Siqilli · Cairo, 969 CE