Cairo: A Cultural History (Cityscapes) - Hardcover

Beattie, Andrew

3.6

10 ratings by Goodreads

9780195178937: Cairo: A Cultural History (Cityscapes)

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0195178939 ISBN 13: 9780195178937

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2005

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Cairo is a city of extremes. On its chaotic streets BMWs driven by businessmen in suits compete for space with donkey carts laden with farm produce. In its mosques the wealthy and destitute pray side by side. The largest metropolis in Africa since the Middle Ages, it was in Arab traveller Isn Battutah's words "the mother of cities." With a present-day population of around eighteen million, this sprawling urban center is home to one thousand new migrants a day, drawn to the seething intensity of a modern, cosmopolitan capital that blends together the culture of the Middle East and Europe. The fabled city on the banks of the River Nile, once home to pharaohs and emperors, now forms a focal point of the Islamic faith and of the Arab world. Andrew Beattie, an established travel writer, explores the turbulent past and vibrant present of this city, where the enduring legacies of the ancient Egyptians, the early Coptic Church, British colonial rule, and the modernist zeal of the post-independce era have all left their marks. Some of the people through whose lives readers will come to know are writers (Mark Twain, Paul Theroux), conquerors (Alexander the Great and Napoleon), and revolutionaries (Lawrence of Arabia and Nasser). Buildings covered will include the pyramids at Giza and the mosques of Cairo, modern skyscrapers and suburbs, waelthy and impoverished.

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About the Author:

Andrew Beattie has traveled widely in the Arab and Islamic worlds, from Morocco to Borneo, and has written for Rough Guides and the Independent on Sunday.

From Booklist:

In Beattie's hands, the kitsch of mass tourism wryly underlies his summary history of pharaonic Egypt and its ruins. Less sought out by sightseers are the vestiges of Cairo's Christian and Jewish communities, whose churches and synagogues Beattie describes in a lost-world tone sympathetic to their obscurity in an overwhelmingly Islamic city. He also notes that Cairo boasts some of the most impressive Islamic architecture anywhere, which he describes in fluid prose. Incorporating many writers' (e.g., Nobelist Naguib Mahfouz's) observations about Cairo, Beattie's tour is a pleasingly refined departure from the typical city guide. Gilbert Taylor
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