Old Cairo, also referred to as Coptic Cairo, is the oldest part of the city, with settlements dating back to the 6th century BCE. As Christianity took hold in Egypt, the area became a Christian stronghold, and at one time contained as many as 20 churches. Today, only five remain. The area, which is only about a square mile, is also home to both the first mosque and the first Synagogue ever built in Egypt.
We visited the Hanging Church first, which gets its name from its precarious location on the top of the southern tower gate of the Babylon fortress. The nave of the church is actually suspended above the passage between the two towers; while the structure has since been reinforced, just a few palm trunks formed the original bridge, and they're still there today. The church was most likely built during the patriarchate of Issac (690 CE), but almost entirely rebuilt by the patriarch Abraham (975 CE). By the 11th century, the Hanging Church had become the official residence of the Coptic patriarchs of Alexandria. It has undergone several other construction efforts up to the present day.Only a short distance away was the Church of St. Sergio, a small church considered to be one of the places where the Holy Family rested on their flight from King Herod to Egypt. Historians place its construction somewhere in between the 5th and 8th centuries CE. The church has suffered some pretty serious water damage, and the cave where the Holy Family stayed goes through periods of being completely underwater. It's currently about half full, so of course we weren't allowed down there. We also weren't allowed to take pictures of this church, probably because the Egyptian government doesn't want people to see the state of disrepair. Restorations are ostensibly ongoing, but I didn't see much evidence of it.
We then went to Ben Ezer's Temple, the first synagogue in Egypt, erected around the 6th century CE. Pictures weren't allowed in there, but I took some surreptitiously since I couldn't hear our tour guide and didn't have anything better to do. Anyway, I don't really know too much about the synagogue, but in the back of it, you can see the well where the daughter of the Pharoah is said to have found baby Moses! Kind of cool, especially since the Nile has shrunk so significantly since then.After that, we went to the Amr Ibn al'As Mosque, which was built in 642 CE by...you guessed it...Amr Ibn al'As, the commander of the army that conquered Egypt. It's said that the mosque is built on the site of his tent, and is the oldest existing mosque in all of Africa.
This is the first and oldest mosque ever built on the land of Egypt. Erected in 642 AD (21 AH) by Amr Ibn al'As, the commander of the Muslim army that conquered Egypt, the mosque is also known as Taj al-Jawamie (Crown of Mosques, al-Jamie'al-Ateeq (the Ancient Mosque) and
Masjid Ahl ar-Rayah (Mosque of Banner Holders). I didn't know that we were going to a mosque, so I didn't bring the requisite scarf with which I could cover my head. No worries, though; they had green smurf-like capes to The school took care of paying for that, but here baksheesh is even present in holy places, and when we went to put our shoes back on at the front entrance (you take your shoes off in a mosque), we were hassled pretty hard for some cash. Apparently it's very expensive to have shoes just sit there. I encountered this gauntlet in al-Azhar before, so I was expecting it, but I don't like it; it kind of sours the whole experience. You'd think of all places, a mosque would be free from that, that men would be compelled to give money of their own will. I'd gladly and sooner donate to the maintenance of the mosque than to grease the palms of the man who sits next to my shoes.
The group then went to some random tourist trap of a restaurant-cum-theme park, with a great buffet of Egyptian food, a baby lion and some random horses. Who knows.
After that, we went to the pyramids at Saqqara, 30km south of Cairo. These were kind of "practice pyramids" for the larger ones at Giza, and Saqqara is home to the world's oldest standing step pyramid. When the capital of Ancient Egypt was in Memphis, Saqqara was its necropolis. It was eclipsed in scope first by the necropolis at Giza and then by the Valley of the Kings in Thebes, but it is said that various cults and groups still used Saqqara as a religious site until well into Roman times.We managed to convince our group leaders NOT to take us to Giza to ride horses around the Pyramids. It was getting late in the day, most of us had work to do, and almost all of us had already seen the Pyramids. Undoubtedly they had some random connection with a stable in Giza, but our collective flat-out refusal to pay any extra money for 30 minutes on horseback got us a one-way ticket back to AUC.
On the way home, I sat next to one of the Egyptian students who had helped to organize the trip, and I spoke to him about the upcoming referendum. In the coming days, Egyptians would vote on a package deal of 34 contentious amendments; Amnesty International has called the amendments the greatest erosion of human rights in Egypt in the last 26 years. Two amendments in particular drew scorn. The first, a ban on all religiously-affiliated parties, once and for all bars Mubarak's National Democratic Party's biggest opposition, the Muslim Brotherhood, from politics. Analysts stated that this would help perpetuate not only the current regime but keep it in the family: Mubarak's son, a high-ranking member of the NDP, could be slated for the next presidency.
The second, an anti-terrorism package, is in effect the cementing of emergency security laws enacted after Sadat's assassination in 1981. That article would give the president the authority to refer terrorism cases to the judicial authority of his choosing, including military tribunals whose verdicts are not subject to appeal. The amendments, which had been approved by congress and then rushed to the polls a week later, had received worldwide attention and criticism. I was eager to hear what this student, a senior Engineering student, thought of the amendments. Would he vote?No. And he didn't see what the big deal was; the amendments would pass no matter if he voted or didn't, and they weren't that bad anyway. I pressed him on the two more high-profile articles, and he seemed either ambivalent or uninformed. While he didn't mention much about the Brotherhood, he said that Mubarak's son was a very well-educated man. I guess this means he's fit to be president. He didn't know much about the anti-terrorism article. He kept stressing that it wasn't a big deal, but that it didn't matter if he voted or not. He then switched the topic of conversation to the contraband videos he had of Sadat's assassination, and spoke at length about that.
I have a difficult time comprehending anyone who can vote, but doesn't; even if you know a measure is going to win, you should still vote against it in order to continue and perpetuate the democratic process. And maybe there's the rub: it's hard for me to understand what it's like to live under something other than a democracy. Honestly, I don't blame Egyptians for not wanting to vote, as it's most likely a superficial nod towards a representative electoral system, but I do believe that apathy and ignorance about your own country is dangerous.
From speaking to a few young Egyptians about the referendum, it seemed like the foreigners were more concerned, informed and invested in these amendments. When we heard that there was going to be a protest one night in Midan Tahrir, a large contingent of Americans headed down to watch what would certainly be an epic battle between police forces and angry protesters. During the day we had seen battalions of police stationed at all the major street corners around the Midan dressed in full riot gear, or packed like sardines in huge trucks at every intersection; we were ready to watch a throwdown.
And...nothing. Seriously. We were the only people there. While the Midan was busy--a uniformed police officer was stationed every five feet or so, and the shops were buzzing with not-so-undercover plainclothes officers (HINT: I don't care if you wear a football jersey; carrying a radio gives you away)--there were no protesters. There were no groups of any kind, excepting the disheartened white kids trying to hide their cameras and wondering where the tear gas was at.Apparently all the suspected troublemakers had been arrested earlier in the day, and we missed the small bit of action that had occurred in a separate location, which apparently amounted to a few men chanting something and being immediately thrown into the back of a paddy wagon. The day of the referendum a voting booth replete with huge "VOTE YES" banners, Mubarak posters, and a DJ spinning pro-Mubarak songs was erected across the street from AUC. I didn't actually see anyone go in to vote; every time I walked past the site, it was deserted. Photography was, of course, prohibited. Sorry faithful readers.
I only knew one AUC student who had voted (you can tell who voted by the neon pink ink used for thumb printing), and she had voted yes. The Americans in my class were shocked; I think we had all expected the voting youth to vote no, if no one else. Why did she vote yes? "I am a Christian," she said, "and I do not want the Muslims in politics."
Simple enough, I guess. The rest of the people I talked to that day said that it didn't matter, why bother, it was useless. And why did I care, anyway? It wasn't my country.
Guess so.
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Read more about how Egyptians voted here.
1 comment:
Perhaps anonymity and apathy go hand in hand?
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