Making Big Buildings in 1600

December 9, 2007

picture by Flickr user MPR529, used under Creative Commons License

Nelly Hanna's book Making Big Money in 1600: The Life and Times of Isma'il Abu Taqiyya, Egyptian Merchant follows the life of one merchant. Hanna provides a map of what was then central Cairo and it is fascinating to see that Abu Taqiyya's home was right here in the center of what is now Islamic Cairo (across from the al-Aqmar mosque). His daily itinerary took him past all the stunning mosques and religious structures along the Sharia al-Muizz al-Din.

Today this area is near the Khan al-Khalili, where tourists come to get souvenirs. It is a rather poor area.. filled with old buildings but not housing any of the truly wealthy members of Egyptian society. When one imagines a city as it existed in the past, this is one of the big problems: changes in social composition occur but the urban landscape remains the same. A zone that was once the center of privilege is converted into a place one goes to visit old buildings.. if one visits at all. So the husk remains the same but the kernel of experience has been transformed.

Hanna discusses the changes that came over the landscape in terms of who was doing the building. The area around the home of Abu Taqiyya was filled with imposing mosques built mostly by the Mamluks, for whom Cairo was their capital. By his day the Ottomans had incorporated the city into their own empire.. and the scale of building declined. Throughout each of these eras contributions to the landscape were always strategic:

The Mamluk sultans had used their monumental structures to further their own glory; their large, imposing buildings, with forceful inscriptions set exactly where the eye of the passerby would see them, were symbols of power. The architecture of the Ottoman pashas likewise displayed symbols of Ottoman power and hegemony, although many provincial features were incorporated. Merchants too could further some of their objectives by using the same formula. Building a mosque, a public school, or fountain was a sign of success... [126-7]

The landscape was constantly being recruited to further the social goals of those with power.

One way to trace the history of a place is to note who the major builders were. Above we can see the trajectory: sultans to pashas to merchants. Those who are in the position to work their power out onto the landscape can be considered central.. yet that group is always shifting. A modern analog to this would be to consider the invasion of the corporate world into the construction of modern sports stadiums.. or the sponsorship of bowl games. What would once have been a civic project gets shifted to corporate benevolence. (I say "benevolence" but obviously it is a way to project power onto the landscape.. so it is hardly a matter of altruism.) In that shift from civic to corporate construction we can trace the rising importance of corporations within American society. In other words: shifts in who pays for big buildings on the landscape will tend to be significant as we try to understand a place. The Staples Center (pictured above) says something important about our shifting social structure.