All posts tagged Citadel

101 PLACES TO TAKE YOUR FAMILY IN EGYPT: 01–05

By | January 4, 2013 | Egypt, Off the Beaten Path, Travel + Leisure | Comments Off on 101 PLACES TO TAKE YOUR FAMILY IN EGYPT: 01–05

By Islam El Shazly

Egypt has hundreds of places to enjoy, not just for the globetrotter or the single adventurer, but for the entire family, young and old. There are, of course, the usual haunts that should be on everyone’s itinerary, but that should not deter from sampling everything else that Egypt has to offer.

There are mountains to climb, trails to hike, and caves to discover. It would be impossible to do all of them in one visit, but just sampling some of the wonders on offer might just bring you and yours back for more. Read more…

WEDNESDAY NOSTALGIA: LANTERN SLIDES WEEK X

By | December 12, 2012 | Egypt, Heritage + Conservation, Wednesday Nostalgia | Comments Off on WEDNESDAY NOSTALGIA: LANTERN SLIDES WEEK X

By Islam El Shazly

Egypt is a land of contrasts, it is paradoxical and perplexing, and looking at the modern Egyptians, one has to wonder whether their – our, since I too am Egyptian – ancestors were like them! And if they were, how on earth did they manage to start and build a civilisation that would endure for close to 6,000 years?!

There are great differences between between the ones that came before and the ones who came after, but there are also great similarities, the most striking of similarities the simplicity of Egyptians, not simplicity in terms of higher brain functions, but rather simplicity of character. We are fairly uncomplicated. Read more…

CITY OF A THOUSAND MINARETS

By | February 11, 2010 | Egypt, History, Travel + Leisure | 5 Comments

by Islam El Shazly

It has been a while since the last post; I’m still getting used to blogging, that, and been working on several articles and the guides pages at the same time.

Cairo; the city of a thousand minarets, that is what Cairo has been referred to in the past, and from time to time, it gets called by that name again, even though Cairo has way more than a 1000 minarets now.

In the older parts of Cairo there a lot of mosques that were build during the time of the Mamluks, they were not one dynasty, rather a sultan after the next. Mamluk literally means ‘owned’, i.e., slave.  The Mamluks were an amalgam of Turks, Uzbeks, Caucuses, Circassians, and Chechnians, among others. The trend of purchasing them as young boys and train them in the arts of war started during the Abassid’s dynasty, and reached a peak at the time of Salah El-Deen, the Mamluks that ruled the Muslim world after the death of the last Ayubid Sultan are the ones who eventually built most of the Islamic monuments that one would see in old Cairo.

Colonnades inside ibn Tulun mosque.

Read more…