Students: Fabienne Waldburger, Peter Weeber
Location: Cairo
Date: October, 2010
Type: Research project, student work

The other lived modern that is often overlooked is the area to the northeast of Islamic Cairo that is called Ghamra, Abbasiya, Sakakini, Zahir.  Its Belle Epoque buildings are visibly comparable to those built in Downtown, yet little has been studied of the area in such proximity—both in place and in time—to the much documented and iconic Downtown.

The area of Abbasiya was developed in 1849 by Wali Abbas I, the grandson of Muhammad Ali, for stationing troops on the desert edge along the route to the outlying villages of Matariyah and Heliopolis.  To encourage the development of the area, Abbas gave free land to those wishing to build, and houses for tradesmen and officers went up rapidly.  A hospital, a school and a palace for the Pasha formed what was a royal suburb.  With abandonment after Abbas’ death, it was not until the British returned in 1882 that the area revived.  With the building of the tramline in the 1900s, the area that once was an outpost began to develop. Growing along the infrastructural line, a conncetor piece between Khedival downtown and Heliopolis, the builder of the Khedival Opera Square, the Count Gabriel Habib Sakakini Pasha (1841-1923)—whose fame remain visible in the Sakini palace at the center of an etoile and who had also built a church in the area in 1897—developed the area in what Robert Ilbert terms “a speculative operation.”  

This topic will look at the contemporary developments that are occurring in this neighborhood, that seem to have a parallel history as its more famed sibling in Downtown Cairo.  Why has the neighborhood remained mostly ‘in the shadow’ of contemporary commercial development and what has this condition of being ‘forgotten’ enabled? What are the qualities that can be preserved if, maybe inescapable, the neighborhood will be ‘discovered’ by real estate development?