Cairo‘s features over a thousand years

Old Cairo... with its cafes, shops, alleyways, and narrow streets, its clear blue dome and golden sunlight embracing its minarets and mosques... No one has seen it without falling in love with it. How many lovers have you, Cairo of Al-Muizz! How many writers have captured your essence in their words, and how many artists have painted your magnificent face in their canvases! It is the same Cairo that the great writer Gamal El-Ghitani fell in love with, and from whom we have come to expect a journey through its streets, recounting its stories in his works. And here is one of those works before us... this book, in which he tells us about Cairo over a thousand years, exploring the features he experienced and sharing his knowledge of its history. He writes about the cafes, their origins, and what they represent, then turns to discuss them as a cornerstone of the literature of Naguib Mahfouz, who was also in love with Old Cairo. He tells us much about its mosques, its women, and their history, allowing us to delve into Fatimid and Mamluk history and arrive at... The shores of the twentieth and early centuries—we learn about the lives of its people as well as its rulers. This book is not a rigid historical study, but rather a narrative in which history is crafted through literature, emerging from the depths of a distant past, nestled within the embrace of history. We discern the details of things in the words. It is a book that composes a poem or sings a lament, from which, dear reader, you will not awaken until it has lingered in your heart and mind, your soul soaring in its echoes, and your very being overflowing with its meaning.