The vintage photograph above depicts a scene from the 1930s of the fashionable district of al-Azbakiyyah located in the heart of Cairo.  This district has had a pervasive influence on the Cairene society throughout the past half of a millennium, influencing almost every aspect of life and constituting what may come to be seen as one of the most important symbols of the complexity of the history of our capital. Its social and cultural impact offers a wide scope of historical inquiry which the following article will attempt  to convey. 
 
 

The steady westward shift of the course of the Nile in Cairo had opened a huge area to urbanization, leaving large ponds (Birak) that would later be sought out as sites for country villas and residences. 

One of the Mamluwk Sultan Qaytbay's high officials, the Circassian 'Amiyr Azbak, who was once the governor of Syria and an atabek [commander-in-chief], undertook large-scale construction in this area around a birkah (pond) in an attempt at development aimed at bringing settlement to the area. 

The chronicler also describes the festivities that accompanied the breaching of the dike across the birkah at the time of the flood:
 

While the Mamaliyk brought genuine urban development to the area, their  luster seems to have dimmed after the death of Amiyr Azbak, the developer of the area. The district was partly looted and burned in the same year.  Many of the al-Azbak's buildings were stripped of their valuable elements (marble) in 1508, and these were re-used in Sultan al-Ghuwriy's constructions. 

After the area was looted, prostitutes began to settle in the ruined district around the pond.  This was a definite sign that the district had begun its decline.  The area was further occupied and ravaged by the Turkomans during the `Uthmanliy (Ottoman) occupation. 

Toward the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, this area started to become more urban as it experienced a revival. 

Settlement of the land around the pond proceeded apace. While middle-class settlers occupied the eastern shore. On the more agreeable southern shore villas were built facing the pond, to receive the cool breeze, by the nobility.  The area started to attract a number of  Umara', whose residences gradually spread also to the western shore.

The wealthy class of Cairo, the great merchants and shaykhs, had already settled in large numbers on the banks of the birkah. The ruling elite needed vast residences that allowed them to house their large households and surround themselves with gardens. For reasons of safety, and also from social exclusivism, they often wanted to isolate themselves from the local population. 

Hence the most beautiful houses in Cairo were situated around this birkah. It was flooded for eight months of the year, and it was a perpetual garden during the other four. During the flood, one sees a great number of gilded dhabiyat (two-masted ships) on which persons of consequence and their wives took the air at nightfall. There was not a day when fireworks were not set off and music was not heard. The latticed windows were filled with innumerable women of quality, whom one could constantly glimpse, thanks to the illumination of these houses during festivities. It was one of the most beautiful spectacles the night had to offer.

In the late 18th century, in the same area, another Mamluwk named Muhammad al-Alfiy built an equally sumptuous palace overlooking the pond. Al-Alfiy inaugurated his new palace on 27 February 1798.  Ironically, on 14 February 1798, the Directory in revolutionary France had approved Talleyrand's report and would soon send Napoleon Bonaparte to Egypt, where the Frenchman would, six month later, make himself at home amid al-Alfiy's furniture! 

The palace became Bonaparte's headquarters, while the district around the pond where French officials of the Expeditionary forces installed themselves, became known as the "Green Zone", as opposed to the "Red Zone" which included the Citadel and al-Rawdah Island where the bulk of the French barracks of the Expeditionary forces were stationed. 

Astonishingly, the "Green Zone", like the present one in occupied Baghdad, also included some of the Egyptian elite who opted for collaboration with the occupier, as well as the seat of the Diwan or the puppet governing council created by Bonaparte! 

By 1800, the French army, due to a debilitating popular resistance, was sick of Egypt.  General Klèber had been assassinated by a militant  insurgent by the name of Sulayman al-Halbiy, on the terrace of al-Alfiy Bey palace on June 14, 1800. All the Delta was up in arms against the French. General Belliard, the last French Commander in Chief , with his 12,000 half hearted soldiers, had no choice but to give in, especially when the British offered to transport the French back to France.

A strange French procession, hoisting black flags to the tune of the muffled drums beating funeral marches, started from al-Azbakiyyah toward Buwlaq. There, the French soldiers, their sick on litters and donkeys carrying their baggage and their plunder, along with Klèber's embalmed and coffined body, embarked on flat bottom boats headed toward Alexandria. By October 1801, the last French soldier had left Egyptian soil. 

The only urban improvement to speak of during the French occupation was the work carried out around the Birkah [pond]. Raised-earth levies were built along the northern and western shores of the pond, and trees were planted in an effort to render the quarter agreeable. It was of course the center of the French military organization, and many officers resided in the neighborhood. 

UNDER MUHAMMAD `ALIY'S REIGN (1805-1849)

Under Muhammad `Aliy's long rule (1805-1849), Egypt leapt into the modern world to take its place on the international political and economic stage. The social structure of the country was thrown into upheaval, its political and administrative system was reformed, a modern army was established, and a new economy developed.

Security reasons led Muhammad `Aliy to abandon his Azbakiyyah residence in 1807 and move to al-Qal`ah (the Citadel). 

For reasons of health and also to facilitate projected improvements to the street system, several cemeteries within the city were closed (such as the one at al-Azbakiyyah). 

With the nature of traffic altered by economic and technological developments, the authorities were already considering how to open the city to circulation. Two new streets were proposed by the Tanziym. The first, perhaps a reprise of the French plan, was to lead from al-Muwskiyy Bridge to the al-Azhar quarter, cutting through the old city from west to east and opening the business district to European merchants: this was the future New Street (al-Sikkah al-Gadiydah). The roadway was 8 meters wide, a generous size at the time. The process of acquiring lots and demolishing the buildings that stood in the way began in 1845, but only a portion of the road had opened to traffic by 1849. 

A more ambitious project was the street intended to pierce the city diagonally from al-Azbakiyyah to the Citadel (the future Boulevard: shariy` Muhammad `Aliy ). This project started in 1845 with the razing of the cemeteries near al-Azbakiyyah and the purchase and destruction of a number of houses, but it was finished only under Isma`iyl. Slowly the old city assumed a new physiognomy as its buildings were constructed in a style foreign to local traditions. A new style appeared with the prohibition against building mashrabiyyat. Muhammad `Aliy's excuse was nominally for safety reasons, but mostly to legislate "modernism." The use of glass windowpanes, a style that was half European and half Turkish, accompanied by a new organization of interior spaces that would become widespread in the second half of the century, supplanted the mashrabiyyat. In 1847, the houses of the Azbakiyyah district were the first of Cairo's streets to receive numbers.

One doesn't know whether or not to credit Muhammad `Aliy with a complete renovation of the Citadel, but he destroyed a good number of the monuments of the preceding centuries and replaced them with buildings that are painfully banal and in some cases aggressively ugly. The modernization of Egypt was taking its toll on the landscape of the capital.

At the inauguration of the Suez Canal in 1869, an event of international importance, representatives from all over the world congregated in Egypt and found a modern country and a modern capital styled after Europe. Time to prepare for the festivities was therefore very short. Transforming the old city was out of the question, neither the time nor the means were available. A European-style facade would instead be tacked onto the western edge of the old city to impress the expected influx of European dignitaries. Thus were the nature and limits of Isma'iyl's enterprise defined.

Khedive Isma`iyl Pasha,with the intention to modernize the Egyptian capital, commissioned the famous French horticulturist Jean-Pierre Barillet Deschamps, (who created the Bois de Boulogne and the Champs de Mars in Paris) to design the famous Garden of this district. Barillet converted the main square into a pleasure garden on the model of the Parc Monceau, with small lakes, grottoes, and bridges.

Inaugurated in 1872, with the khedive in attendance,  al-AZbakiyyah Garden offered the public various amenities: shops, a photographer's studio, a tobacco stand, a shooting gallery, restaurants and cafes (European, Oriental, and Greek), a Chinese pavilion, a theater, and pedal boats. 
 

A portion of what remained from this garden is shown on the right side of this photograph, along with the original fence which has since been the Rendez vous of many Cairene book lovers. 

Just as spectacular was the transformation of the al-Azbakiyyah into a garden, in a district where the urban tissue of the old city and the, modern street system met. Perhaps it was intended as the new center of the city, where the placement of the opera house would occupy the center stage in that district. The Opera, called the  Khedivian or Royal Opera House, was built hastily on the model of La Scala in Milan for the inaugural celebration of the Suez Canal. 

Meanwhile, work also began on Clot Bey Street, which connected the railway station and al-Azbakiyya. Work on its extension, shariy` Muhammad `Aliy, connecting al-Azbakiyyah and the Citadel. This incision into the old city ran a straight course for 2 kilometers and entailed the demolition of 700 dwellings and a variety of other buildings, including historical monuments such as the Quwsuwn Mosque, which suffered irreparable damage. The wide roadway was bordered by sidewalks and shaded in some parts by trees and in others by arcades. Gaslights were installed along the entire length of the road, which was swept three times a day. Al-Azbakiyyah quarter in 1874 measured 104 hectares, with streets accounting for 30 percent of that area, and buildings for 13 percent. The vast gardens that composed the remainder provided a reserve of land for subsequent development.

In the colonial period under the British occupation, the trend first manifested in Isma'iyl's urban projects of creating two cities side by side intensified. Before the dividing line separated a "traditional qasabah" sector from a "modern" one, but after Egypt's colonization, the line marked a boundary between different nationalities, a harsher and more intolerable division. One could now speak of a "native" city and a "European" one, parallel to those large towns of North Africa under the French colonial rule.

These two worlds differed in every respect, even to the layout of their streets, which were anarchic to the east and regular to the west, faced each other across an invisible frontier running north and south from Bab al-Hadiyd to al-Azbakiyyah, and from`Abdiyn to al-Sayyidah Zaynab district. 

Foreigners turned modern Cairo into "the center of a capital from which Egyptians were excluded," wrote an Egyptian historian:
 

A modern mass transit system was established between 1894 and 1917. In December 1894, Baron Empain obtained the concession to provide Cairo with a tramway system. The original agreement called for the building of eight lines, six of which were to start from the southeast corner of al- Azbakiyyah Garden of this district. Within two years, 22 kilometers of tram lines had been laid.

In 1900, Line No. 15 was inaugurated, joining al-Azbakiyyah, from Maydan al-`Atabah  to across the Nile (al-Rawdah, Imbabah, Giyzah, the pyramids). These 65 kilometers of tramlines, which constituted Cairo's quasi-definitive tram system , put the city's center a mere hour away from its furthest extremities and, in 1917, carried 75 million passengers per year.  Shown in the photograph above is a tramway of the famous line No.15.

On April 1915, during W.W.I under the British occupation, when Australian and New Zealand troops were about to leave Egypt for the Gallipoli front, some of them determined to exact punishment for certain injuries they believed themselves to have incurred at brothels in the "combat zone" (Red district) of al-Azbakiyyah known as "Wagih al-Birkah", went on a wild rampage, torching buildings and destroying properties. 

In March of 1925, the nascent Egyptian Parliament was dissolved. The National parties (mainly the Wafd and, al-Ahrar al-Dustuwriyyin, the Liberal Constitutionalists) resolved that their respective Chamber of Deputies and Senate representatives would assemble in the parliament building the following day to protest and exhibit their collective defiance of their autocratic ruler King Fuw'ad I.  As usual, the government had other ideas and mobilized the police and army to prevent their congregation. Determined to press ahead with their plans, while avoiding clashes with the security forces, the delegates decided to hold their assembly in the Continental Hotel at the Opera square, then one of Cairo's major hotels. There, in a momentous resolution, the Chamber of Deputies withdrew its confidence in the government. The Continental Hotel in question is in the background of this vintage photograph. 

On January 26, 1952.  the news of the assault on the Egyptian police barrack at Isma`iyliyah, in the Suez canal zone, by British forces spread over Cairo like a prairie fire.  People considered the incident as another massive "humiliation" for Egyptians; their police slaughtered on Egyptian soil, by a foreign power.  As usual, the government did nothing.  However, people spontaneously reacted.   In a matter of hours, a screaming sea of humanity filled the streets.  In anger they set fire to foreign establishments.  Within minutes, the walls were caving in and the fabled Shepheard's Hotel, (which incidently was the site of al-Alfiy bey palace),  now a symbol of foreign occupation, was no more.  Almost simultaneously with Shepheard's, Badiy`ah night club Cabaret at the end of Opera Square was equally attacked and burned.

In the residential sectors on the fringes of the business district, families cringed in their apartments watching the wave of flames drawing nearer and nearer.  It looked as if the entire city was about to be destroyed.

Since the 1960s al-Azbakiyyah garden has become neglected and dusty. The garden was dissected by the extension of shariy` 26 July to Maydan al-Khazandar and was gradually enchroached upon by a number of different buildings. Since then,  it has been refered to as al-'Azbakiyyah gardens (in the plural).

Ironically, al-`Atabah square area, located at the heart of al-Azbakiyyah district, was originally known, during the Mamaliyk period, as al-`Atabah al-Zarqa' (or the blue threshold).  It was renamed al-`Atabah al- khadra (or the green threshold) at the time the French occupied the area and established their headquarters there. 

In light of the U.S. invasion of Iraq and the establishment of the "green zone" in Baghdad, one can easily detect an age old pattern which had been developed earlier in Egypt. The experience of the Egyptian "green zone" established by the French occupation forces would be repeated Ad Finem in all Colonial encroachments in the third world. From Al-Azbakiyaah precursory model all the way to Tian-jin, southeast of Beijing in China. In China  Tian-jin served as a treaty port as well as a foreign compound supplanted in the heart of China.

In their attempt at creating a puppet government in Egypt under the control of the French expedition, Bonaparte and Klèber established a precedent which would be avidly copycatted by all colonial powers from that time on.  Following their example, Sir Claude MacDonald, the British Privy Council in China (c. 1900), modeled a similar "green zone" to accommodate foreign legations exempted from local legal jurisdiction in China . So, it did not come as a surprise when, after the American invasion of Iraq, US Ambassadors Paul Bremen and John Negroponte established their version of  a "green zone" in Baghdad in the exclusive area where Saddam Husayn had built sumptuous palaces.   Today, the US embassy in Baghdad is housed in one of Saddam's former palace in the "green zone". Incidentally this US Embassy, the biggest of its kind in the world,  is also the headquarters of an army of assessors placed in key post in the ministries of the puppet regime in Baghdad. 

In all these cases, without exception, these futile attempts at creating an insulated "green zone" managed to fuel staunch popular insurgencies. From the Cairo revolts in 1798 and 1800, to China's Boxer rebellion in June of 1900, to the ongoing Iraqi insurgency. 

In analyzing each of these situations, one can only come to the obvious conclusion that the "green zone" pattern has its roots in the "social  exclusivism" of a ruling elite class which needed vast residences that allowed them to house their large households and surround themselves with gardens.  "Isolation from the local population" was an expedient which would be readily exploited by these foreign invaders for their own security. One can certainly say that old habits never die. 
 

Ishinan 
 
 

Q: Can you name the Mamluwk Amiyr who founded this district? (10 points)  A: Mamluwk Amiyr Azbak

Q: Can you name this area which was named after its illustrious Mamluwk Amiyr founder? (50 points)  A: Al-Azbakiyyah

Q: Can you tell the itinerary of tramway line No. 15? (10 points) A: From Maydan al-`Atabah al-Khadrah to the Pyramids (Giyzah) Via two lines: One running through al-Rawdah and the other through Zamalik and Imbabah to al-Giyzah.

Q: Can you name the famous hotel where the Egyptian Chamber of Deputies gathered in defiance of King Fuw'ad in 1925? (10 points) A: Hotel Continental

Q: Can you name the famous garden which was designed by the famous French horticulturist Jean-Pierre Barillet Deschamps under Isma`iyl Pasha reign's in this district? (20 points) A: Al-Azbakiyyah Garden

 

Ishinan