Cairo Citadel

Feel the wind first. Up here, on a spur of the Muqattam Hills, the air moves differently than in the streets below. It carries the far-off sound of car horns, the call to prayer rising from a hundred minarets, and a fine pale dust that settles on your shoes. Below you, Cairo spreads out in every direction, a grey-gold sea of rooftops. You are standing in the place that ruled Egypt for roughly seven hundred years.

The story begins with a man most of the world knows as Saladin. His full name was Salah al-Din Yusuf ibn Ayyub. In the late twelfth century, around 1176, he began to fortify this rocky height. He had good reasons. Crusader armies threatened the region. Cairo itself had rival factions. A fortress on high ground could watch the city, guard the roads, and shelter a ruler from enemies both outside and inside the walls.

Saladin did not live to see his citadel finished. The work continued under his successors in the Ayyubid dynasty, the family line he founded. His nephew, al-Kamil, moved the seat of government up here and made the fortress a royal residence. From that moment, the Citadel was more than a military post. It became the place where sultans lived, where decisions were made, and where the fate of Egypt was argued over behind thick stone walls.

Now look at the walls themselves. Much of the stone is a warm limestone, quarried from these same hills. Some sources say that Saladin's builders also took blocks from small pyramids at Giza. You will notice that the walls do not all match. Towers are round in one section and square in another. That is because many rulers added, repaired, and rebuilt over the centuries. The fortress shows layer after layer of different hands.

After the Ayyubids came the Mamluks. They were a remarkable ruling class. Many of them began life as enslaved soldiers, brought from Central Asia and the Caucasus, and trained for war. Over time they took power for themselves. They ruled Egypt for more than two and a half centuries, and they built lavishly. The Citadel became the heart of their world, full of palaces, barracks, stables, and mosques.

One Mamluk building still stands close by: the Mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad, from the early fourteenth century. Look up at its two minarets. Their tops are covered in green tiles, an unusual touch in Cairo. Many historians link this tilework to craftsmen from Persia, the region of modern Iran. It is a small detail, and most visitors walk past it on their way to the larger mosque next door. Take a moment here first.

Then comes the building that dominates every photograph of the Citadel. The Mosque of Muhammad Ali was built in the first half of the nineteenth century, and completed in the late 1840s. Its silhouette is quite different from Cairo's older mosques. A large central dome sits among smaller domes, flanked by two very tall, very slender pencil-shaped minarets. This is an Ottoman style, the style of Istanbul. It was a deliberate message about power and taste.

Who was Muhammad Ali? He was an Ottoman military commander, born in what is now northern Greece. He arrived in Egypt after Napoleon's French army left, and he rose to become its ruler. He is often called the founder of modern Egypt. He built factories, schools, and a modern army. And in 1811, here at the Citadel, he invited the leading Mamluks to a celebration... and then had them killed as they rode through a narrow passage. Mamluk power in Egypt never recovered.

Walk into the mosque's courtyard. Many people call this the Alabaster Mosque, because its walls are clad in pale alabaster stone. In the centre stands a domed fountain for ritual washing. Look up at the far side, and you will see a clock tower. This clock was a gift from King Louis-Philippe of France. In return, Egypt gave France an obelisk from Luxor. That obelisk now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. Locals often joke that Egypt got the worse side of the bargain, because the clock is said never to have kept proper time.

Step inside the prayer hall. Your eyes will need a moment. Hundreds of small lamps hang on long chains, and the great dome rises far above you, painted and gilded. Near the entrance, behind a bronze grille, lies the tomb of Muhammad Ali himself. He chose to be buried in the building he created. Remove your shoes before entering, and speak softly. This is still a place of prayer.

The Citadel has another surprise underground. Joseph's Well was cut deep into the rock in Saladin's time to supply water to the fortress. It is named for Saladin, whose given name was Yusuf, the Arabic form of Joseph. But a popular tale links it instead to the biblical Joseph, and that story has travelled with the well for centuries. Treat it as legend. The real achievement is the engineering: a shaft driven straight down through solid stone.

Before you leave, find the terrace on the western side. On a clear day, the view runs right across the city. Directly below, you can see the two great mosques of Sultan Hasan and al-Rifa'i, side by side. Beyond them lies the maze of Islamic Cairo, the old medieval city. On the clearest days, some visitors pick out the pyramids of Giza on the far horizon, small grey triangles in the haze.

The Citadel stopped being the seat of government in the nineteenth century, when the rulers moved down to new palaces in the city. Today it holds museums, quiet corners, and families sharing snacks in the shade. Stand still for a minute. Listen to the wind, the pigeons, the distant traffic. As you walk back through the gate, notice the stone under your hand. It has watched Cairo for more than eight hundred years, and it is still watching.