Historic Cairo Private Day Tour: Citadel, Coptic Cairo and Khan el-Khalili

1. 

   Chapter 1 · Late morning · on the Muqattam hills

   Salah al-Din's walls, built from Giza

   Salah al-Din ordered this fortress in 1176, and Egypt was ruled from up here for more than six centuries.

   His builders took stone wherever they found it. Blocks from the small pyramids at Giza went into arches across the floodplain.

   His son spent eight months trying to take Menkaure's pyramid apart. It is still there.

   Walk to the terrace and look west. On a clear day, the pyramids sit on the horizon: the ones that got away.

   Sources: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, site pages (read 2026), Cairo Citadel; Mark Lehner, The Complete Pyramids (1997), pp. 41, 45.

2. 

   Chapter 2 · Noon · the Citadel's mosque

   A clock for an obelisk

   Muhammad Ali's mosque, finished in 1848, sets an Istanbul plan on a Cairo hill: a great dome on four half-domes.

   In the courtyard, a clock tower. King Louis-Philippe of France sent it in 1845.

   Egypt's gift in return was an obelisk from Luxor Temple. It has stood in the Place de la Concorde ever since. You may decide who got the better deal.

   Look for: Inside, two pulpits: the original in green-painted wood, and a later one in marble.

   Sources: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, site pages (read 2026), Muhammad Ali Mosque; Richard H. Wilkinson, The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt (2000), p. 168.

3. 

   Chapter 3 · Old Cairo · inside the Roman walls

   A church hung over a Roman fort

   You are inside the walls of a Roman fortress called Babylon, where a legion was once stationed.

   This church is called the Hanging Church because it was built over the fort's ruins, suspended above them.

   Inside, a wooden roof likened to Noah's Ark, rows of marble columns, and a pulpit on ten slender pillars from the eleventh century.

   Look for: Above the carved wooden screen, the icons: most from the late 18th century, the oldest from the 15th.

   Sources: Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, site pages (read 2026), The Hanging Church; Ian Shaw (ed.), The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt (2003), p. 417.

4. 

   Chapter 4 · A few lanes on

   A synagogue that kept every scrap of paper

   A few lanes on, the Church of St Sergius, from the fifth century. Tradition says the Holy Family sheltered in its crypt.

   And the Ben Ezra Synagogue, the oldest in Egypt. Old writings here were never thrown away. They went into a store-room called a geniza.

   Some eight and a half centuries of letters, contracts and lists piled up, until Europeans found them in 1888.

   Look for: The reading platform in the middle of the hall, and the ark inlaid with mother-of-pearl.

   Sources: Roger S. Bagnall and Dominic W. Rathbone (eds.), Egypt from Alexander to the Copts (2017), §3.1.c; Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, site pages (read 2026), Ben Ezra Synagogue.

5. 

   Chapter 5 · Late afternoon · the bazaar

   An inn for merchants that became a district

   In 1382, Sultan Barquq's master of the horse built an inn for travelling merchants here. His name was al-Khalili. The bazaar still carries it.

   For centuries this was the quarter of foreign traders: Armenians, Jews, Persians.

   Gold and silver are sold by weight. Everything else is a conversation.

   End it the old way, at Fishawi's teahouse by the Mosque of al-Husayn, with a glass of mint tea.

   Look for: Near the tourist police post, look up at the heavy iron grilles of the old inn, through which merchants watched the street.

   Sources: Caroline Williams, Islamic Monuments in Cairo (5th edition, 2002), pp. 159–160.

Times of day set the scene; your written quote confirms the timetable. Facts come from the sources named under each chapter, and where we give an opinion, it reads as ours.