Cairo's City of the Dead

July 17, 2006

A "City of the Dead" is a hard idea to get one's head around. It can be explained most simply by the fact that what once were large cemeteries have now become neighborhoods.. and thus literally these cemeteries are cities, complete with apartments and shops. The funerary monuments that form the background to the neighborhood range from small to monumental. In the above picture you can see two towering Mamluk era mausoleums.. while in other cases the grave is marked by only a small marker:

There are two major medieval cemeteries in Cairo. The first is to the south of the modern city, and the other to the west. The cemetery to the south is the home for the mausoleum to the Imam al-Shafi'a, and was the oldest of Cairo's cemeteries (lying outside Fustat). By the time of the Mamluks, after the city center had established itself further to the north, the burial zone of choice ranged to the west of the city, filling a slice of land to the north of the citadel. Below is a picture of this cemetery as the French saw it around 1800 when Napoleon invaded (and set the artists of the Description d' l'Egypte at work):

That is a wall of the citadel on the right, and down below you can see the band of mausoleums and funerary structures that makes up what is now called the "Northern Cemetery." Anyone who knows Cairo, however, will be somewhat shocked to see all that empty space.. but here the cemetery appears as it must have in the centuries before 1800, as a ghost-like place sitting isolated outside the city proper.

Ghostly maybe, but that does not mean this area would have been devoid of residents. In fact a number of large Khanqahs were constructed in this area during the 14th and 15th centuries. The picture above is a photo of the entrance passageway for the Khanqah of Sultan Barquq (1382). Like the other Khanqahs, this one too would have housed Sufis, and younger students would have come for the Kuttab. So this cannot be imagined even in the early days as a cemetery in the way that we like to imagine them, but as a realm of the dead which inevitably included the living.

The book The Fellahin of Upper Egypt by Winifred Blackman provides an interesting description of popular Egyptian funerary customs:

One day a week—in some parts of Egypt on Thursday, in others on Friday—the villagers pay a visit to the graves of their relations and friends. The ceremony is called et-Tala', meaning the coming forth or going up. Many of the cemeteries are situated in the lower desert, and this name may have been given because the people always spoke of 'going up' to and 'descending' from the desert... A number of fukaha [scholars] were always present on these occasions, as it was their business to recite various passages from the Koran by the gravesides, for which purpose they are hired by the visitors. Some of the women brought with them large baskets full of bread-rings, and with these they rewarded the fukaha for their recitations, which are believed to be of great benefit to the dead. [117-18]

This is an account of village life in upper Egypt.. but it is not hard to reason from this to the value that a large endowed mausoleum would have for earlier Mamluk rulers. It was a way ensure Qur'an recitations and other beneficial actions at the site of his grave. From the popularity of visiting the dead we can also understand why these zones for the dead outside Cairo could never be really empty.. but were always cities: the visitation of these sites was such a regular feature of life that a service industry was demanded.. and that in turn meant residents.

The size for the mausoelums varies greatly. In the foreground above is the "Tomb of the Seven Maidens" from the mid-15th century, while in the background is the "Tomb of al-Rifa'i" from the 16th century. In both cases these are relatively small structures standing by themselves. They have a dome with a single chamber underneath. This would have been the place that mourning and Qur'an recitations took place. The majority of these small monuments are literally mouldering away, the trash collecting along their walls:

Obviously the "seven maidens" are not getting a lot of visits these days..

Along with these smaller monuments come the really monumental structures. The Khanqah of Barquq is an example of just how large these buildings could get.

At either end of the qiblah side of the structure are two domes, underneath which are the graves of the members of the family of Barquq.. it seemed to be the women who were buried on the right side and the men on the left. The tomb of Barquq himself is below, covered with dust:

Barquq's mausoleum is better preserved than that of the "seven maidens".. but I don't think he is getting much more in the way of prayers. Why do humans always seem to think that they will be remembered for so long? In its own way these Islamic mausoleums can be viewed with the same level of irony as we approach the ancient Egyptian monuments for the dead.. with their monumental statues falling head first into the dirt. In this case we have ornate marble lined interiors covered with dust..

Up above is a splendid dome, and these domes give the voice a splendid echo.. I imagine it would be perfect for reading the Qur'an. Although I cannot say just what historically made the connection between burial and a dome.. but as you drive through the outskirts of Cairo and see the ornate domes, you can know that each one of them marks a tomb.

The dual stone domes in the Khanqah of Sultan Barquq are the largest stone domes in Cairo (that of Imam Shafi'a being wooden):