Founded in 969 by a Fatimid general, its Arabic name means 'the Vanquisher' or 'the Victorious' (969)
Al-Qahira, founded by Jawhar al-Siqilli for the caliph al-Muizz
Geography Ā· Cities
Cairo
founded 969
Egypt ā on the Nile, at the head of the delta
Founded in 969 by the Fatimid dynasty as a new royal enclosure beside the older settlement of Fustat, it grew into the largest city in Africa and the Arab world. Its medieval core holds the oldest continuously operating university in the world and so many minarets that it is called the city of a thousand of them. Its government has been building a new administrative capital in the desert to the east since 2015.
How to spot them
- āøThe largest city in Africa, on the world's longest river just below the pyramids
- āøQuiz clue: 'the City of a Thousand Minarets', 'al-Azhar', 'Khan el-Khalili', 'Tahrir Square'
- āøFounded by the Fatimids in 969; its name means 'the Vanquisher'
- āøIts predecessor settlement was Fustat, founded by Arab conquerors in 641
Key facts
It is the largest city in both Africa and the Arab world
Greater metropolitan population of over 20 million
Its mosque-university of 970 is generally called the oldest continuously operating degree-granting institution in the world (970)
Al-Azhar
Nicknamed for the thousand minarets of its medieval quarter
The historic core holds one of the world's densest concentrations of Islamic architecture
Saladin built its hilltop citadel in the 1170s; a great alabaster mosque was added to it in the 19th century (1176ā1183)
The Citadel; the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, 1830ā1848
Its central square, whose name means 'Liberation', was the focus of the 2011 uprising (2011)
Tahrir Square, in the revolution that unseated Hosni Mubarak
The pharaonic treasures once shown in its pink neoclassical museum on that square have moved to a vast new museum near the pyramids (1902; new museum opened 1 November 2025)
The Egyptian Museum on Tahrir Square and the Grand Egyptian Museum at Giza
Quick-fire facts
- ā¢Egypt's capital and largest city; the earlier Arab capital on the site was Fustat, founded in 641
- ā¢It stands on the Nile just south of the delta; the island of Gezira lies in the river
- ā¢Khan el-Khalili is the great medieval bazaar; Coptic Cairo is the old Christian quarter
- ā¢Historic Cairo was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1979
- ā¢The pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx stand on the west bank, within the modern conurbation
- ā¢The Cairo Tower, opened in 1961, is a lotus-shaped concrete tower on Gezira island
- ā¢Naguib Mahfouz, the only Arabic-language winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature (1988), set his Cairo Trilogy in its streets
- ā¢The City of the Dead is a vast inhabited necropolis on the city's eastern edge
- ā¢A New Administrative Capital has been under construction in the desert east of the city since 2015
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Sources
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre ā Historic Cairo
- Encyclopaedia Britannica ā Cairo