"city of the dead" in cairo. Egypt, Cairo: Cairo Museum, Coptic Quarter, City of the Dead Period of the Arab conquest of Egypt

It's not just the name of a cemetery. They really live here, among the crypts -

it happened, probably not from a good life

The cemetery is capital, vast, indeed the whole city.

Going to the Scavengers, from the City of the Dead, you will not pass.

We were not allowed into the territory, the escort only allowed us to slow down and look through the fence at the cemetery architecture.
They explained - so as not to disturb the peace of the inhabitants.
I wasn’t particularly eager, and my friends on the trip tried to get through, but it didn’t work.

Accompanying note -

All travelers are required to bring an escort "on board". In addition, that also the police car followed relentlessly.
We called "guides" in civilian clothes (with a short-barreled machine gun under the skirt) among ourselves "jackets" - the poor fellows steamed all day in a tight suit, dragging us through the pyramids, slums, sands and deserts, despite the fact that the Egyptian sun even in September still frying all over.
As for me, it’s calmer with an escort, although - don’t go there, you can’t go here, it was also a matter of coordinating every step with the authorities. What depressed our warm company a lot, I am ready for feats)
The guide - a local, a Cairo - for some reason began to assure that the security forces were not for protection, but to look after us so that they would not go where they should not. What is so forbidden there you can peep among the devastation, God knows. But one way or another, local beggars and other rogues kept aloof, the police are respected. In one of the hotels they decided to throw us - the jacket was destroyed, it is also more interesting for him to sleep in the room, and not to graze a restless group. They treated us normally, on occasion they suggested something, through a guide, they didn’t enter into conversations themselves, they didn’t command the “formation” =) By the way - unlike the people on the streets (also calmly friendly for the most part), the “jackets” knew that we are Israelis.

The place to live is unique, of course.

Passing pictures.

To the topic of the horrors of the quarter of garbage processors - this is already far beyond its aisles,
count city center, bridge over the nile

Under the bridge - a bus station with a street market -

Buses are crowded, minibuses are the capital, after all

From the desert, dust is constantly blown by the wind - that's why everything is withered. And the pieces of paper under your feet, apparently, do not soar anyone.

Buildings all around are not too different from the dwellings of the Zabbaleen -

Somewhere more neatly, somewhere completely fear-and-horror -

This, of course, can be found anywhere, if you set a goal, even in Tel Aviv, even in Rostov, even Europe is not all brand new,
but I didn’t rummage through the garbage dumps, I took pictures of everything along the route

The authorities are doing what they can, with the roads at least

The streets are not bad, the highway is more or less. The broken road came across only in the desert wilds, in the distant Sivs

Tuk-tuks based on scooters are a very common mode of transport.

Advertising has turned up - oil products from Libya are advertised. Egypt does not have its own. And there's not much to trade. Hence the gaps in the economy.
In Jordan, the same picture. Tourism is perhaps the only export item.
When provocative publishers compare - "here, de, how the Arabs live in the territories! But how the Israelis!" - they forget to compare with the rest of the Middle East,
Who is stopping them from cleaning the streets? If he does not interfere with anyone there, except for the passing European community.

Beauty center, not halam-balam

The house is not yet fully occupied, it begins to deteriorate along the way. The winds are strong...
And what I liked was niches for condos so that the facade would not be spoiled.

Skinny sheep or dogs? straight away and don't say

They can when they want

One day, when I was relaxingly studying Google.Earth, lazily moving the mouse from Angola to the Cook Islands, and from Nakhodka to Madeira, I noticed something that I thought about for at least six months later. In Cairo, where he had repeatedly visited, and believed that he had visited everything that was possible, he now discovered a completely new object with the name Jaheen Alkhalawatee. And I got the idea to go there. The matter was aggravated by the fact that I could not find anything on the Internet about this place, resembling a hybrid of a palace and a mosque, and located on the slopes of Mukattam Mountain, in the eastern part of Cairo. Once in this city on December 17, 2009, I set out to find this temple of dreams -

And the task was not easy. Not a single living soul, from taxi drivers to the imams of a number of mosques, knew anything about the existence of such a place. We spent half a day driving around Cairo in a taxi, but we did not find anything. We climbed Mukattam and searched there, and were expelled by the soldiers guarding the air defense base on the top of the mountain, we infiltrated the city of the dead, but failure awaited us there too. It's time to despair, but it's not in my rules. The picture I saw on the Internet did not let me sleep peacefully, and on the last day of the trip, after seeing my fellow traveler to the airport (the girl left for Moscow), I set off to look for this very place with triple persistence. And now I decided to do it on foot, so as not to accidentally slip through it while moving by car. I was waiting for 20 (!) kilometers of the way through the whole of Cairo, but I was mentally prepared for this.

Experts will ask - why strain in search of this building, if it is clearly indicated on the map in the city of the dead in the southeastern part of Cairo? The answer is simple - the person who posted this photo put it at the wrong point. And when we got there for the first time by taxi, we were sadly convinced of this. The task was to walk long kilometers, winding through the southern and northern cities of the dead, in order to visually recognize what was captured in the photo.

After escorting my companion to the 356 airport bus, which leaves from a small stop behind the Cairo Museum for only 1 (one!) Pound, I went to the Maspero boat pier, opposite the Nile Hilton hotel. From there, every hour, river buses leave, following both up and down the Nile. More information about Cairo river trams on the TourEgypt website (eng). This is a wonderful walk if you have a couple of hours to spare. The walk costs only 2 pounds, and you ride along the river for about an hour, swimming under all the bridges, making a circle past the island of Jazira, where the tower of the Sofitel hotel is. Surprisingly, I did not meet a single tourist, but only Egyptian families relaxing on their day off. Unfortunately, tourists simply do not reach these cheap municipal river buses - they are simply torn apart by street hustlers (molesters), pulling in a felucca with a Nile cruise along the exact same route as the river tram, but at a price 30-50 times more expensive ie 50-100 pounds per person.

So, after riding the Nile, I landed on the west bank of the river, at Giza, opposite the zoo and Cairo University. Love this area, away from the crowds of central Cairo. The audience is completely different, no street pestering, cleaner and more pleasant. Walked around the campus of the university. Very, very interesting. Both the buildings themselves and the students leading a normal student life. I had a bite to eat in one of the local canteens for students, which is called remembered myself in their years. Funny!

After breakfast at the university, I went to the nearby zoo, but, being an animal lover, I could not stay there for a long time - the conditions for keeping unfortunate pets were too spartan. In addition, the zoo has been turned into a kind of amusement park and fast food. It seems that it’s not a zoo at all, but a kind of recreation park for lower-class workers, based on the amount of garbage lying around. Therefore, crossing the Nile towards the island of Roda, I went deep into the city -

Cairo - city of contrasts

Still, sometimes one is amazed at how close wealth and chic are to poverty and despair in the countries of Africa and the Middle East. It seems that you just crossed the bridge over the Nile, it's a 5-minute walk. But from decent Giza with its university campus, parks and civilized skyscrapers, you find yourself in an absolutely impoverished part of the city. The slums are so depressing that I did not take pictures of them, nor did I find color in the homeless pissing on the ancient aqueduct, or sheepskins dumped in the middle of the street, rotting in the hot sun. You know, there are such connoisseurs of naturalism who professionally and with a million photo effects photograph sketches from the life of a simple Cairo? I guess I'm a hypocrite, and I don't see charm in the workers who write en masse on ancient graves and monuments. As well as an absolutely naked legless beggar, tearing up abandoned skins with oozing blood - is also not positive, although the poor fellow is just cold at night. Meanwhile, you will observe such pictures following to the east along the ancient An-Nasr aqueduct, which stretches for several kilometers from the island of Roda almost to the Citadel.

Not without relief, having got out to the Cairo ring highway with 4 lanes in each direction, I tried to cross it - unsuccessfully. The flow of cars is so dense that it seems like suicide to cross to the opposite side. There were no footbridges or traffic lights either. Without exaggeration, it took about 30 minutes before I managed to cross the track, and then only because there was an accident, and all traffic got stuck in a dense traffic jam.

And here I am in the southern part of the city of the dead. A gloomy place, I must say, especially if you are alone and it starts to get dark. Feeling like you are in the computer game "Doom". Remember this one? When you rush through the tunnels, and various monsters jump out at you? I experienced the same thing in this gigantic cemetery. Not only do you not know where to go - there are monotonous crypts around you and you can’t see how and where to go further, but also a lot of stray dogs and beggars, pulling their hands towards you from another crypt. I understand that there is no mysticism in this, and we are talking about poor people, but still, when you are tense and definitely lost, everything is seen in a darker light.

For almost two hours I climbed among the graves and family crypts, and eventually got tired to such an extent that I stopped being afraid of anything. And a bunch of local gouging children, who decided to play stone throwing with a tourist and hit me in the leg, got their full. I not only turned out to be more accurate than them, but also went on the offensive, caught one of the fleeing and gave him a powerful kick in the ass, from which he flew forward with acceleration, as if he had been implanted with a turbine. The children ran away screaming, and no longer bothered. In general, Egypt became the third country where I had to fight a stone battle with local youth. The first episode was in Israel, in East Jerusalem. Then - in Morocco, in Ouarzazate, and now here in Cairo.

And now, oh miracles, I saw what the whole day was going to!

Then he went closer, hoping to get there in order to photograph the city of the dead from there -

Alas, I did not have time to go upstairs. It was getting dark, there was no time, and walking through the slums in the dark did not seem safe.

A little pleasant in the end

In order to expel the darkness and dust of ancient crypts from the soul, I went to the elegant Roxy district of Cairo, which is not far from the international airport. This is the richest of Cairo's neighborhoods, with lots of beautiful villas, beautiful colonial architecture, and a very nice unobtrusive aura that is sorely lacking in the city center. Meanwhile, it was very evening, and the camera began to miss the light, for which I will forgive you -

The secret is revealed!

The secret of this mysterious mosque is revealed, for which thanks to Misha (aka

Cairo Museum

It is located in the very center of the city - a solid building in which 120 thousand exhibits sleep and dream. Museums in general are a phenomenon. For some reason, the tombs are considered scary and mysterious, but the museums, which store all the same things, only in much larger quantities, are reputed to be the abode of boredom. Meanwhile, their corridors are roaming ethereal shadows and bizarre as they please. How many times did the author of these lines, wandering alone in the enfilade of Kuskovo or Fontainebleau, notice a movement in the corner of her eye or a restrained chuckle.

There are quite a lot of visitors in the Cairo Museum - this is a minus. There are a lot of halls in it, that there is an opportunity to get lost - this is a plus. The most popular part of the museum belongs to the mummies and the golden mask of Tutankhamun. The most interesting is the family of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

The upper floors store small objects (Fayum portraits, dishes and utensils). It is relatively calm here, and only the most sensitive explorers of the incomprehensible can hear whispers and rustles here. The invisible life is much more active on the first floor, in the right gallery (when viewed from the entrance). There you will find a cluster of figures - from human height and higher, higher ... Giants surround the visitor from all sides. Nothing threatening, you feel moderate interest and should behave decently.

An ordinary tourist flies through this corridor rapidly, justifying himself by the fact that he is tired, that he has been wandering around the museum idle for two hours, that he wants to drink and eat (there is no food inside the museum). Knowing a lot about miracles, freezes in the corridor of megaliths for a long time. There are single giants here, there are couples and even triplets - the ruler, his wife and his right hand, friend and adviser. Hours pass in reflection on how high relations should be in such unions. You look at them, they look at you.

coptic quarter

This is a strange place that is always being renovated. It consists of a luxurious museum, the main church of the Virgin (Al-Muallaq),

Church of St. Sergius

and the streets of Old Cairo, located significantly below the asphalt level.

When you go down the stairs, do you go deep into time - or deep into yourself? Feelings are conflicting. There are hundreds of worshipers and pilgrims around. There are not so few Christians in Egypt, and they all come to pray here, in the area of ​​Babylon.

The fact is that the Copts are Christians forgotten in a Muslim country. They did not accept the schism of churches, they were eternally persecuted and despised, they left behind a naive art - dancing little men with big eyes. Their icons are painted as if artlessly, but the more you look at them, the deeper you understand the Coptic style “let's be like children”.

There is a synagogue in the Coptic quarter. Copts are kind, they accept everyone who feels bad. And at certain hours you can go down to the cave where the holy family allegedly hid during the flight from Egypt, and then several ascetics lived in it, century after century. I don't know about the family, but the dungeon is very prayerful. Going down into it, you feel a special kind of excitement and delight.

All these places are described in detail in guidebooks, but at the end of the labyrinth of Old Cairo there is one inconspicuous church in which happiness lives. It is difficult to describe in words the church concept of "grace". Scientists would say something about the breakdown of trace elements and their entry into some pleasure centers. Cult workers would raise their eyes to the sky. It was enough for me that birds sang in this church.

You go into a small, not very well-kept church of St. Barbara. For some reason, you sit down - in Coptic churches there are benches, as in Catholic churches. You sit for two minutes and realize that large tears are rolling from your eyes. That you are so light and sorry for everyone, that you as an egoistic unit do not exist at all. And over all this storm of feelings invisible goldfinches sing. They nest above the vault, high under the roof. They are not driven. They understand that it is their chatter that creates an unprecedented psychedelic effect.

If we talk about paranormal phenomena, officially recorded, then there are enough of them in the Coptic diaspora. In the church of Sergius, a cross streams myrrh over the described cave. Twenty years ago, night lights were recorded without a light source in the church of St. mch. Damian in the Shubra district of Cairo. The most famous miracle was in Zeytun on the outskirts of Cairo: the Mother of God repeatedly appeared there, large, with a crowd of people, on the roof of a Coptic church. Mirages happened throughout 1968, and even if it was someone's scam (to blow fog and project a filmstrip on it), it was not done out of evil, but for good. Because it is possible to support a superstitious people only by a miracle.

City of dead

A cemetery where quite cheerful people live.

The giant necropolis of El Khalifa, partly inhabited - this is how the government solved the housing problem. The cemetery for the wealthy in Egyptian style consists of pleasant little estates: a four-room house, a small garden, even some architectural excesses are present. Most of the houses have an owner, an ancestor of the buried. But the owner is reluctant to go to the necropolis every week, look after the garden, brush off the dust in the house. Therefore, he allows some hard-working family to settle in the grave house, which will honor what is left of their eminent relative in the past, and the house will not fall apart. Others even pay the settlers for their work.

The inhabitants of the City of the Dead live off tourism. For the entrance to the house and the inspection of the grave, they take from a dollar and more from the nose. During the day, several hundred curious people pass through the city - children beg for imported pens from them, adults invite them into their homes. El Khalifa has everything: mosques, shops, tea houses, cafes, tire fitting, wheel alignment. There are quiet and wild places of desolation where one wants to roam Byronically. Only the locals themselves do not advise. They say that these are European stupidities, in fact, it’s scary there, hungry ghosts and brutalized beggars dart around.

Tatyana Arefieva.Published: Magic Cosmo January 2006.

The City of the Dead (Qarafa) is one of the largest necropolises in the world. It is located on the outskirts of Cairo at the foot of the Mokattam Mountains. Cemeteries have existed here since the 12th century. and began to expand from the 15th century, the most ancient tombs belong to this period. The forms of the tombs are very different: some are simple stone gravestones, others are real mausoleums erected in order to shelter the remains of emirs and sultans. But these are exceptions. The majority are small one- or two-room houses with gardens. About 50 years ago, poor residents of Cairo and nearby regions began to settle in the cemetery. Now in the City of the Dead lives from 50 to 500 thousand people. The exact figure is not known even to the authorities.

In the foreground (see two photos below) are the graves of poor people. And the richer people are buried in the tomb houses. It is in these houses that the population of the City of the Dead lives.

View of the City of the Dead from the Citadel of Salah ad-Din:

In the first forty minutes of walking about the life of people, except for the garbage that is everywhere in Cairo, nothing reminded:

Then the signs of life began to appear:

Campaign posters of local candidates for deputies are quite common.

Children walk near the graves:

Someone carefully made a fence around the trees, but the garbage is not removed:

There are taxis in the City of the Dead:

When the authorities realized that the cemetery was inhabited by a huge number of people, water supply, electricity were installed, and schools were built. Nobody is going to disperse people. The housing problem in Cairo is much more acute than in Moscow.

Luxurious tombs of emirs and sultans are gradually being destroyed:

While going on a trip and looking at photos of Cairo on the Internet, back in Moscow I saw and wanted to visit a dilapidated mosque right in the middle of a steep mountainside. The hotel managers, who, by the way, were very skeptical about my trips to bad areas, did not give me any information. I had to look for this mosque on my own.
The search did not take long - I saw the mosque from the high walls of the Citadel, got into a taxi and after 10 minutes of driving along the King Khaled highway through the City of the Dead, I was not far from the goal.

It was impossible to go further by car, but I did not know how to get closer to the mosque, which, as it turned out, was called the Amir El-Guyush Mosque (Mosque Amir Al-Guyush, 1085). A local teenager of about fifteen volunteered to accompany me for a moderate fee. The road went through the cemetery again.

And here we are at the foot of the mountain. The mosque is only some 200 meters along a rather steep slope. I told my guide that I wanted to try to climb the mountain. He did not keep himself waiting. Light, being shod in simple slippers, he quickly overcame 50 meters of a steep climb. With a bag over my shoulder, which contained two cameras, a bottle of water and some other nonsense, I began my clumsy ascent. As a result, after 15 minutes, I was hopelessly stuck. Having laughed, the guide helped me down, and I decided to leave the conquest of the mountain until the next trip.

View from the Citadel. On the right in the background is the Amir El-Giyush Mosque. In the foreground is another colorful area of ​​Cairo - Garbage City. There will be a next post about it.

P.S.
If someone managed to climb the mountain and visit inside the Amir El-Giyush mosque, please post photos and send a link. Thank you in advance!

In Egypt, under Mount Mukattam, north of the Citadel, is the Cairo necropolis - the City of the Dead. Cairo is the capital of the state, consisting of many districts, one of which is this long cemetery. The age of the burial ground exceeds two millennia, and the territory is constantly increasing. Now its length is more than 6 kilometers.

City of the Dead (Cairo)

Egypt is considered a Muslim country, only 15% of the inhabitants profess Christianity, so the City of the Dead is an Islamic necropolis. Hearing this name, many people think that we are talking about the Great Pyramids located in Giza, near Cairo. But in fact, this is the name of the largest cemetery located in the capital of Egypt. By the way, it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. But, despite this status, the necropolis is not popular among tourists and local residents.

The city of the dead (Cairo), whose name is al Qarafa, translated from Arabic means "cemetery". It consists of five main cemeteries - North, South, Bab el-Nasr, Bab el-Wazir and Great.

In memory of the departed

In the northern part of al-Karafa, the mausoleums and mosques of the sultans Inal and Kaitbey, Faraj Barkuk, and the Barsbey complex rise. Mameluk mazars and ancient buildings from the time of the Fatimids were built in the southern part.

Some of the tombs are already crumbling, while others stand intact as they are built of marble. As in life, they are buried in large tombs, and ordinary mortals have modest tombstones.

The city of the dead (Cairo) by its age belongs to the oldest mass graves. On its territory, people from different walks of life found peace - both ordinary citizens and representatives of blue bloods. Many tourists are impressed by the majestic tombs of the rulers of the world who lived several centuries ago, as well as how their relatives honored the memory of their departed family members.

Initially, this cemetery was erected as a burial place for the Arab conquerors of Egypt, the Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks, Ottomans, and now it has become one of the slums of Cairo, where the living and the dead coexist in the neighborhood.

Living and dead

Today, this unusual metropolitan area is not only the last refuge for those who have gone to another world, but also the place of residence of tens of thousands of the poorest Cairo who have no other roof over their heads. The reason for this was the Egyptian crisis, the lack of affordable housing for a rapidly growing population. Therefore, many poor Egyptians chose the city of the dead as their home.

Some of them, in agreement with the relatives of the deceased, live directly in the crypts. As a rule, in return, they undertake to look after the graves and restore order in the surrounding area. Thanks to this arrangement, the City of the Dead (Cairo) is much cleaner than some of the main streets of the capital.

Here you can often see boys playing football and women hanging clothes between tombstones. For many of them, the City of the Dead has become a real home for a long time. Life here is different from that which boils in other areas of Cairo. The streets here are quiet, narrow, not paved. It seems that behind the high walls with decorative gates there is a completely different world: all around there are solid domes, minarets and no politics.

al Qarafa: kings and the poor

“I have lived here for 80 years, and my family has lived in this place for 350 years. King Farouk is buried next to my house, ”said a local resident of the City of the Dead in 2011. Despite such a strange neighborhood, he believed that "life with the dead is a good thing for an old man." Indeed, it is much more terrible to be near the living, from whom you do not know what to expect.

Nevertheless, starting from the 60s of the last century, a kind of infrastructure appeared here: shops were opened where you can buy food, clothes and souvenirs, even houses were built. Transport goes here, people work here.

No one can accurately answer the question of how many people live in this gloomy quarter among millions of graves. Today, the population of the "City of the Dead" area (Cairo) continues to grow due to the migration of villagers, natural disasters and a housing crisis. Presumably, we are talking about a half-million settlement.

City of the Dead (Cairo): reviews of tourists

Tourists who visit the City of the Dead are usually discouraged. For many of them, it is strange to see a city with houses where the mummified bodies of relatives of the homeowners are kept. According to them, this spectacle is not for the faint of heart. Despite the fact that people with low income live here, it is difficult for most tourists to understand how it is possible to stay in a house with a tomb in another room in order to save on expenses.

Others, on the contrary, consider walking through the City of the Dead very exciting. It is unusual for them that living people are constantly among the tombs, and they gladly respond to the offer of local residents to enter their homes.

And yet he's beautiful

But not all guests of the capital pay attention to such moments. Many of them visit the City of the Dead (Cairo) in order to admire the most beautiful tombs of Arab rulers, for example, the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali. The beautiful creations of the masters of the past, who created majestic structures by hand, do not leave indifferent true connoisseurs of architecture.

For some, this unusual place has remained in memory as a cemetery stretched for 4 miles, on the territory of which the poorest residents of Cairo live. They do not recommend visiting the labyrinth of tombs, houses and the famous necropolis, as it is easy to get lost without a guide and you can become a victim of robbers and other criminals.

However, when you come to rest in Egypt, visit the City of the Dead (Cairo), the photo of which does not give a complete picture of the true beauty of this area. Once on its streets, you will feel like a character from "A Thousand and One Nights".