Routledge Handbook on Cairo

Nezar AlSayyad is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Architecture, Planning and Urban History at the University of California, Berkeley, where he designed and also served for two decades as Chair of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES). He is a founder and past President of the International Association for the Study of Traditional Environments (IASTE), and Editor of Traditional Dwellings and Settlements Review (TDSR). Among his grants and awards are those from the National Endowment of the Arts, the Getty Center, Ford and the Graham Foundations, and a Guggenheim Distinguished Fellowship. He has authored and edited numerous books, several of which have been translated into other languages, among them Nile: Urban Histories on the Banks of a River (2019); Traditions: The Real, The Hyper, and the Virtual in the Built Environment (2014); Cairo: Histories of a City (2011); The Fundamentalist City? (2010); Cinematic Urbanism (2006); Making Cairo Medieval (2005); and Cities and Caliphs (1991).

"Any volume on Cairo is invariably an ambitious undertaking. AlSayyad’s ambition is well realized in this impressive, multi-faceted collection that does justice to the city’s rich texture of places, peoples, and pasts. It deals with a real and imagined city, in ways that foreground its ever-changing character and draw the reader into a dense mix of ancient and modern, materiality and the intangible, and the grand and the intimate. Aside from its obvious scholarship, what really stands out in this book is the passion its contributors share for Cairo."Mike Robinson, Professor of Cultural Heritage, Nottingham Trent University

• Part 1: Histories1.1. Cairo: The State of a CityNezar AlSayyad1.2. Al-Qata’iʿ: A Lost City in Cairo – RevisitedTarek Swelim1.3. Cairo as a Palace: Rituals of the Fatimid CaliphateAyman Fouad Sayyid1.4. Building Mamluk Cairo: The Capital of a SultanateOmniya Abdel Barr1.5. Coopting the Street: The Urban Character of Mamluk Architecture in CairoNasser Rabbat1.6. 1340 Years of Cairo’s Medieval NecropolisGalila El Kadi1.7. Policing Cairo in the Nineteenth CenturyKhaled Fahmy1.8. Khedivial Cairo: The Genesis of the Modern City and the Prospects of its DowntownSoheir Hawas1.9. Tahrir Square: The Roundabout and the History of Modern CairoMariam AbdelazimPart 2: Representations2.1. The Skylines of Cairo: A Photographic EssayKarim Badr2.2. The Earliest Images of Cairo’s Islamic ArchitectureDoris Behrens-Abouseif2.3. Seeing Cairo Through Paris: Nineteenth Century Literary Observations by Egyptian IntellectualsKinda AlSamara2.4. Sayings and Songs: On the Intangible Culture of CairoAhmed O. El-Kholei2.5. Cairo Through Her Eyes: Space and Gender Dynamics in Naguib Mahfouz’s Bayn Al-Qasrayn Mohammad Salama2.6. The Judge, the Officer and the Demiurge: Figures and Figurations of Old Cairo Ann Madoeuf2.7. Cairo on Film: The Modernity of a Cinematic CityNezar AlSayyad2.8. Revolutionary Cairo: The City Still RemembersDina EzzatPart 3: Discourses3.1. The Normalization of Hijab: Islamic Reveiling in CairoSherifa Zuhur3.2. Informal Cairo: The Making of an Urban FabricAhmed M. Soliman3.3. Cairo’s Desert Backyard: The Future of an Ever-Growing Metropolis?David Sims3.4. (Re)Connecting with Wounded Spaces: Encountering Memory, Place and Narrative in Cairo’s Historic LandscapeGehan Selim3.5. An Untold Urban Narrative: Transcending Gender, Culture and Modernity in Cairo’s Old QuartersMohamed Gamal Abdelmonem3.6. Rethinking Urban Transformations in Cairo: A View From ‘Middle’ Class Housing in al-MohandiseenKhaled Adham3.7. Government Visions: A Planner’s Perspective on the Remaking of CairoSahar Attia3.8. The Transformation of Public Space in Post-Revolutionary Cairo: A Diary from Tahrir, 2011-2013Mona Abaza