"Details the shifts in Cairo's built environment through stories of important figures who marked the cityscape with their personal ambitions and their political ideologies"--Jacket.

Includes maps of: Memphis, Dahshur, Saqqara, and Giza; Fortress of Babylon; Fustat and Its Surroundings; Fustat, al-Askar, al-Qatai, and al-Qahira; Cairo Area during the Ayyubid Period; Cairo Area during the Bahri Mamluk Period; Cairo during the Burji Mamluk Period; Cairo Area during the Ottoman Period; Cairo at the End of Muhammad Ali's Rule; Khedival and Royal Cairo; Cairo during Nasser's Rule; Greater Cairo Region.

Preamble : reading and writing Cairo -- Memphis : the first Cairo -- From ancient Egypt to the Coptic enclave -- Fustat-Misr : the city of Arab Islam -- Al-Qahira : a Fatimid palatial town -- Fortress Cairo : from Salah Al-Din to the Pearl Tree -- The Bahri Mamluks : the city of the slave sultans -- Governing from the tower : the Burji Mamluks -- A provincial capital under Ottoman rule -- A changing city : from Napoleon to Muhammad Ali -- Modernizing the new, medievalizing the old : the city of the Khedive -- The Arab republic and the city of Nasser -- Escaping the present, consuming the past.