Making Cairo Medieval

Nezar AlSayyad is chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and professor of architecture and planning at the University of California, Berkeley. Irene A. Bierman is professor of art history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Nasser Rabbat is associate professor of architectural history at MIT.

Making Cairo Medieval will fascinate any scholar who cares about cities, their histories, their transformations, and efforts to control them. It was French specialists and amateurs at the 1867 Paris Exposition who first designated a specific area as 'Islamic Cairo,' though Cairenes soon became active agents. While historic preservation was the ostensible goal, artistic classifications, historical knowledge, cultural hierarchies, urban design, property ownership, tourism, and colonial power all played a role, giving a distinct orientalist tone to the enterprise. The essays offer an illuminating variety of perspectives on the cultural, architectural, political, economic, and intellectual intentions and effects of this immense, ongoing urban project.

• Chapter 1 Prologue: The Project of Making Cairo MedievalPart 2 A Medieval City for a Modern WorldChapter 3 Disciplining the Eye: Perceiving Medieval CairoChapter 4 The Medieval Link: Maqrizi's Khitat and Modern Narratives of CairoChapter 5 'Ali Mubarark's Egypt: Between the Testimony of 'Alamuddin and the Imaginary of the KhitatPart 6 Representing and NarratingChapter 7 Performing Cairo: Orientalism and the City of the Arabian NightsChapter 8 Nineteenth-Century Images of Cairo: From the Real to the InterpretiveChapter 9 The Museum of What You Shall Have BeenPart 10 Disciplining and MakingChapter 11 Nineteenth-Century Cairo: A Dual City?Chapter 12 Modernizing Cairo: A Revisionist NarrativeChapter 13 Medievalization of the Old City as an Ingredient of Cairo's Modernization: Case Study of Bab ZuwaylaChapter 14 The Cemeteries of Cairo and the Comité de Conservation