2023-09-01 04:22:06
The City of the Dead, the medieval necropolis that is part of Cairo history, is currently threatened by the government of egypt which last May began to demolish its historic mausoleums to make way for a new highway, ignoring the warnings of the Unesco and its status as a World Heritage Site.
The tombstones with inscriptions in Arabic that protrude from among the ruins bear witness to this measure that seeks to unite the center of Cairo with the New Administrative Capital, a megalopolis in the desert some 50 kilometers east of the city, whose route crosses this cemetery with tombs of more than 1,300 years where illustrious figures of the history, culture and arts of the country lie.
“The cemeteries became a museum that linked this world and the herefollowing, and brought together the remains of those who wrote the history of Egypt”published the Egyptian urban researcher Ibrahim Ezzeldin on the website The Tahrir Institute For Middle East Policy (TIMEP) at the beginning of August.
This urban planner warned of the loss of demolishing this space where personalities such as Taqi al Din al Maqrizi, a Cairo historian, whose tomb has already been demolished and removed, rest; while the grave of the writer Taha Hussein still stands, the “dean of Arabic letters”, among others.
In addition, the varied artistic and architectural styles mark the different historical periods and endow the burial sites that extend around seven square kilometers at the foot of the Mokattam hills, southeast of the capital, with greater heritage value.
history in ruins
The excavators entered there at the beginning of the year, although the plans to build the road began in 2022 when the Government moved the humble families who had lived and cared for the place for generations, including in the Unesco World Heritage List in 1979 as part of historic Cairo.
Mustafa el Sadek, passionate regarding Islamic history and art, documented in May the destruction of several parcels whose niches were reduced to rubble, as shown by the photographs he published on the Blue Cairo X account, which shares content on architecture and urbanism. local.
“When the demolitions began, they did not take into account the little things (…). If you lose a tombstone, you lose a part of history, which is the main value of Egypt, where we have no money,” El Sadek told EFE.
After this incursion of the bulldozers, numerous citizens came out in defense of the patrimonial heritage on social networks using the Arabic label “save the cemeteries of Egypt”.
Lack of protection of heritage
The campaign reached Unesco, which on July 31 published the provisional agenda for the 45th Convention on the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which will be hosted by Saudi Arabia from September 10 to 25.
There, UNESCO expressed its concern that “In May 2023, multiple media outlets reported the ongoing demolition of historic structures in the City of the Dead to build new main roads and flyovers.”
Therefore, the World Heritage Center requested clarifications from Egypt in accordance with the Operational Guidelines, since previously “the State Party reported that no road had been built within the boundaries of the property (…) nor was there any demolition of any tombs or mausoleums within the property.”
Given the contradictory information, Unesco reiterated its request to halt any project until it is “the Global Sustainable Development Plan has been finalized and approved and a clear vision and principles for the future have been defined”.
An uncertain future for a glorious past
Galila el Kadi, an Egyptian urban planner, leads a research team on the preservation of Cairo’s architectural heritage at the University of Paris, from where she has been monitoring the City of the Dead for the past three decades.
“The previous UNESCO report was highly critical of the Egyptian authorities and their treatment of heritage heritage, particularly in historic Cairo,” El Kadi told EFE, who remarked that Egypt promised to carry out a revitalization plan that it never carried out and later launched a network of new roads.
Now, he is looking forward to the next meeting between Unesco and the Egyptian government, which will take place in ten days in the Saudi capital, Riyadh.
Meanwhile, neighbors and lovers of Egyptian history and culture beyond the pharaohs fear that the machinery, paralyzed for the moment, will return to destroy the next targets to be demolished, already marked and identified with paint, to continue with the president’s infrastructure. Egyptian, Abdelfattah al Sisi.
EFE
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