City of the Dead Cairo. City of the Dead (Cairo region). Cairo - "Diamond Button"

During my independent trip to Cairo in the fall of 2008, I happened to visit the "City of the Dead", a giant Muslim cemetery in the center of Cairo, or rather a small part of it, located not far from the walls of the Citadel.


However, this relatively small area between the bulks of the Southern and Northern cemeteries gives a complete picture of the originality of the ancient Cairo cemeteries.


Here, among the tombs of ordinary Egyptians, you can also see many Mamluk mausoleums.


This is a huge necropolis, perhaps the largest in the world. Cemeteries have existed here since the 12th century. and began to expand from the 15th century, the most ancient tombs belong to this period.


And despite this, the city of the dead is rarely visited by tourists. There are many fears and phobias of "white people" associated with this place, here are the ubiquitous beggars and homeless people living in graves and in general fear of any necropolis.


The author of all photos in this post is Alexander Emelyanov


Cairo cemeteries are inhabited - more than 10,000 refugees from Palestine and those who cannot afford housing among the living live here. Often, the homeless live in crypts with the consent of the relatives of the deceased, at the same time looking after order. Some tombs are supplied with electricity, garages and benches. Thus, it is a whole city within a city.



The forms of the tombs are very different: some are simple stone gravestones, others are real mausoleums erected in order to shelter the remains of emirs and sultans. But these are exceptions. The majority are small one- or two-room houses with gardens - a relic of the burial traditions of the era of the pharaohs, which are preserved today in the Coptic community. Such areas and such pleasant "dwellings" began to quickly attract beggars, who gradually occupied these places. The situation escalated even more when in 1967 refugees from the Suez Canal region entered here. The squatting of the homeless was basically nothing new, but this unexpected incursion of at least 300,000 people created enormous problems and threatened to lead to dire consequences. However, the situation was soon corrected. The government was able to provide housing for some of these people. Egypt managed to solve this problem, and the cemeteries did not turn into horrifying ghettos. Much of the City of the Dead is well maintained.


Once here, as if you find yourself in the thick of centuries


For example, in this particular place, nothing seems to have changed for 500 years.
The full version of the report on my visit to the Cairo cemeteries can be seen

It's not just the name of a cemetery. They really live here, among the crypts -

it happened, probably not from a good life

The cemetery is capital, vast, indeed the whole city.

Going to the Scavengers, from the City of the Dead, you will not pass.

We were not allowed into the territory, the escort only allowed us to slow down and look through the fence at the cemetery architecture.
They explained - so as not to disturb the peace of the inhabitants.
I wasn’t particularly eager, and my friends on the trip tried to get through, but it didn’t work.

Accompanying note -

All travelers are required to bring an escort "on board". In addition, that also the police car followed relentlessly.
We called "guides" in civilian clothes (with a short-barreled machine gun under the skirt) among ourselves "jackets" - the poor fellows steamed all day in a tight suit, dragging us through the pyramids, slums, sands and deserts, despite the fact that the Egyptian sun even in September still frying all over.
As for me, it’s calmer with an escort, although - don’t go there, you can’t go here, it was also a matter of coordinating every step with the authorities. What depressed our warm company a lot, I am ready for feats)
The guide - a local, a Cairo - for some reason began to assure that the security forces were not for protection, but to look after us so that they would not go where they should not. What is so forbidden there you can peep among the devastation, God knows. But one way or another, local beggars and other rogues kept aloof, the police are respected. In one of the hotels they decided to throw us - the jacket was destroyed, it is also more interesting for him to sleep in the room, and not to graze a restless group. They treated us normally, on occasion they suggested something, through a guide, they didn’t enter into conversations themselves, they didn’t command the “formation” =) By the way - unlike the people on the streets (also calmly friendly for the most part), the “jackets” knew that we are Israelis.

The place to live is unique, of course.

Passing pictures.

To the topic of the horrors of the quarter of garbage processors - this is already far beyond its aisles,
count city center, bridge over the nile

Under the bridge - a bus station with a street market -

Buses are crowded, minibuses are the capital, after all

From the desert, dust is constantly blown by the wind - that's why everything is withered. And the pieces of paper under your feet, apparently, do not soar anyone.

Buildings all around are not too different from the dwellings of the Zabbaleen -

Somewhere more neatly, somewhere completely fear-and-horror -

This, of course, can be found anywhere, if you set a goal, even in Tel Aviv, even in Rostov, even Europe is not all brand new,
but I didn’t rummage through the garbage dumps, I took pictures of everything along the route

The authorities are doing what they can, with the roads at least

The streets are not bad, the highway is more or less. The broken road came across only in the desert wilds, in the distant Sivs

Tuk-tuks based on scooters are a very common mode of transport.

Advertising has turned up - oil products from Libya are advertised. Egypt does not have its own. And there's not much to trade. Hence the gaps in the economy.
In Jordan, the same picture. Tourism is perhaps the only export item.
When provocative publishers compare - "here, de, how the Arabs live in the territories! But how the Israelis!" - they forget to compare with the rest of the Middle East,
Who is stopping them from cleaning the streets? If he does not interfere with anyone there, except for the passing European community.

Beauty center, not halam-balam

The house is not yet fully occupied, it begins to deteriorate along the way. The winds are strong...
And what I liked was niches for condos so that the facade would not be spoiled.

Skinny sheep or dogs? straight away and don't say

They can when they want

Cairo Museum

It is located in the very center of the city - a solid building in which 120 thousand exhibits sleep and dream. Museums in general are a phenomenon. For some reason, the tombs are considered scary and mysterious, but the museums, which store all the same things, only in much larger quantities, are reputed to be the abode of boredom. Meanwhile, their corridors are roaming ethereal shadows and bizarre as they please. How many times did the author of these lines, wandering alone in the enfilade of Kuskovo or Fontainebleau, notice a movement in the corner of her eye or a restrained chuckle.

There are quite a lot of visitors in the Cairo Museum - this is a minus. There are a lot of halls in it, that there is an opportunity to get lost - this is a plus. The most popular part of the museum belongs to the mummies and the golden mask of Tutankhamen. The most interesting is the family of Akhenaten and Nefertiti.

The upper floors store small objects (Fayum portraits, dishes and utensils). It is relatively calm here, and only the most sensitive explorers of the incomprehensible can hear whispers and rustles here. The invisible life is much more active on the first floor, in the right gallery (when viewed from the entrance). There you will find a cluster of figures - from human height and higher, higher ... Giants surround the visitor from all sides. Nothing threatening, you feel moderate interest and should behave decently.

An ordinary tourist flies through this corridor rapidly, justifying himself by the fact that he is tired, that he has been wandering around the museum idle for two hours, that he wants to drink and eat (there is no food inside the museum). Knowing a lot about miracles, freezes in the corridor of megaliths for a long time. There are single giants here, there are couples and even triplets - the ruler, his wife and his right hand, friend and adviser. Hours pass in reflection on how high relations should be in such unions. You look at them, they look at you.

coptic quarter

This is a strange place that is always being renovated. It consists of a luxurious museum, the main church of the Virgin (Al-Muallaq),

Church of St. Sergius

and the streets of Old Cairo, located significantly below the asphalt level.

When you go down the stairs, do you go deep into time - or deep into yourself? Feelings are conflicting. There are hundreds of worshipers and pilgrims around. There are not so few Christians in Egypt, and they all come to pray here, in the area of ​​Babylon.

The fact is that the Copts are Christians forgotten in a Muslim country. They did not accept the schism of churches, they were eternally persecuted and despised, they left behind a naive art - dancing little men with big eyes. Their icons are painted as if artlessly, but the more you look at them, the deeper you understand the Coptic style “let's be like children”.

There is a synagogue in the Coptic quarter. Copts are kind, they accept everyone who feels bad. And at certain hours, you can go down to the cave, where they allegedly hid holy family during the flight from Egypt, and then several ascetics lived in it, century after century. I don't know about the family, but the dungeon is very prayerful. Going down into it, you feel a special kind of excitement and delight.

All these places are described in detail in guidebooks, but at the end of the labyrinth of Old Cairo there is one inconspicuous church in which happiness lives. It is difficult to describe in words the church concept of "grace". Scientists would say something about the breakdown of trace elements and their entry into some pleasure centers. Cult workers would raise their eyes to the sky. It was enough for me that birds sang in this church.

You go into a small, not very well-kept church of St. Barbara. For some reason, you sit down - in Coptic churches there are benches, as in Catholic churches. You sit for two minutes and realize that large tears are rolling from your eyes. That you are so light and sorry for everyone, that you as an egoistic unit do not exist at all. And over all this storm of feelings invisible goldfinches sing. They nest above the vault, high under the roof. They are not driven. They understand that it is their chatter that creates an unprecedented psychedelic effect.

If we talk about paranormal phenomena, officially recorded, then there are enough of them in the Coptic diaspora. In the church of Sergius, a cross streams myrrh over the described cave. Twenty years ago, night lights were recorded without a light source in the church of St. mch. Damian in the Shubra district of Cairo. The most famous miracle was in Zeytun on the outskirts of Cairo: the Mother of God repeatedly appeared there, large, with a crowd of people, on the roof of a Coptic church. Mirages happened throughout 1968, and even if it was someone's scam (to blow fog and project a filmstrip on it), it was not done out of evil, but for good. Because it is possible to support a superstitious people only by a miracle.

City of the dead

A cemetery where quite cheerful people live.

The giant necropolis of El Khalifa, partly inhabited - this is how the government solved the housing problem. The cemetery for the wealthy in Egyptian style consists of pleasant little estates: a four-room house, a small garden, even some architectural excesses are present. Most of the houses have an owner, an ancestor of the buried. But the owner is reluctant to go to the necropolis every week, look after the garden, brush off the dust in the house. Therefore, he allows some hard-working family to settle in the grave house, which will honor what is left of their eminent relative in the past, and the house will not fall apart. Others even pay the settlers for their work.

The inhabitants of the City of the Dead live off tourism. For the entrance to the house and the inspection of the grave, they take from a dollar and more from the nose. During the day, several hundred curious people pass through the city - children beg for imported pens from them, adults invite them into their homes. El Khalifa has everything: mosques, shops, tea houses, cafes, tire fitting, wheel alignment. There are quiet and wild places of desolation where one wants to roam Byronically. Only the locals themselves do not advise. They say that these are European stupidities, in fact, it’s scary there, hungry ghosts and brutalized beggars dart around.

Tatyana Arefieva.Published: Magic Cosmo January 2006.

In Egypt, under Mount Mukattam, north of the Citadel, is the Cairo necropolis - the City of the Dead. Cairo is the capital of the state, consisting of many districts, one of which is this long cemetery. The age of the burial ground exceeds two millennia, and the territory is constantly increasing. Now its length is more than 6 kilometers.

City of the Dead (Cairo)

Egypt is considered a Muslim country, only 15% of the inhabitants profess Christianity, so the City of the Dead is an Islamic necropolis. Hearing this name, many people think that we are talking about the Great Pyramids located in Giza, near Cairo. But in fact, this is the name of the largest cemetery located in the capital of Egypt. By the way, it is an object world heritage UNESCO. But, despite this status, the necropolis is not popular among tourists and local residents.

The city of the dead (Cairo), whose name is al Qarafa, translated from Arabic means "cemetery". It consists of five main cemeteries - North, South, Bab el-Nasr, Bab el-Wazir and Great.

In memory of the departed

In the northern part of al-Karafa, the mausoleums and mosques of the sultans Inal and Kaitbey, Faraj Barkuk, and the Barsbey complex rise. Mameluk mazars and ancient buildings from the time of the Fatimids were built in the southern part.

Some of the tombs are already crumbling, while others stand intact as they are built of marble. As in life, they are buried in large tombs, and ordinary mortals have modest tombstones.

The city of the dead (Cairo) by its age belongs to the oldest mass graves. On its territory, people from different walks of life found peace - both ordinary citizens and representatives of blue bloods. Many tourists are impressed by the majestic tombs of the rulers of the world who lived several centuries ago, as well as how their relatives honored the memory of their departed family members.

Initially, this cemetery was erected as a burial place for the Arab conquerors of Egypt, the Abbasids, Fatimids, Mamluks, Ottomans, and now it has become one of the slums of Cairo, where the living and the dead coexist in the neighborhood.

Living and dead

Today, this unusual metropolitan area is not only the last refuge for those who have gone to another world, but also the place of residence of tens of thousands of the poorest Cairo who have no other roof over their heads. The reason for this was the Egyptian crisis, the lack of affordable housing for a rapidly growing population. Therefore, many poor Egyptians chose the city of the dead as their home.

Some of them, in agreement with the relatives of the deceased, live directly in the crypts. As a rule, in return, they undertake to look after the graves and restore order in the surrounding area. Thanks to this arrangement, the City of the Dead (Cairo) is much cleaner than some of the main streets of the capital.

Here you can often see boys playing football and women hanging clothes between tombstones. For many of them, the City of the Dead has become a real home for a long time. Life here is different from that which boils in other areas of Cairo. The streets here are quiet, narrow, not paved. It seems that behind the high walls with decorative gates there is a completely different world: all around there are solid domes, minarets and no politics.

al Qarafa: kings and the poor

“I have lived here for 80 years, and my family has lived in this place for 350 years. King Farouk is buried next to my house, ”said a local resident of the City of the Dead in 2011. Despite such a strange neighborhood, he believed that "life with the dead is a good thing for an old man." Indeed, it is much more terrible to be near the living, from whom you do not know what to expect.

Nevertheless, starting from the 60s of the last century, a kind of infrastructure appeared here: shops were opened where you can buy food, clothes and souvenirs, even houses were built. Transport goes here, people work here.

No one can accurately answer the question of how many people live in this gloomy quarter among millions of graves. Today, the population of the "City of the Dead" area (Cairo) continues to grow due to the migration of villagers, natural disasters and a housing crisis. Presumably, we are talking about a half-million settlement.

City of the Dead (Cairo): reviews of tourists

Tourists who visit the City of the Dead are usually discouraged. For many of them, it is strange to see a city with houses where the mummified bodies of relatives of the homeowners are kept. According to them, this spectacle is not for the faint of heart. Despite the fact that people with low income live here, it is difficult for most tourists to understand how it is possible to stay in a house with a tomb in another room in order to save on expenses.

Others, on the contrary, consider walking through the City of the Dead very exciting. It is unusual for them that living people are constantly among the tombs, and they gladly respond to the offer of local residents to enter their homes.

And yet he's beautiful

But not all guests of the capital pay attention to such moments. Many of them visit the City of the Dead (Cairo) in order to admire the most beautiful tombs of Arab rulers, for example, the mausoleum of Muhammad Ali. The beautiful creations of the masters of the past, who created majestic structures by hand, do not leave indifferent true connoisseurs of architecture.

For someone it unusual place and remained in memory as a cemetery stretched for 4 miles, on the territory of which the poorest residents of Cairo live. They do not recommend visiting the labyrinth of tombs, houses and the famous necropolis, as it is easy to get lost without a guide and you can become a victim of robbers and other criminals.

However, when you come to rest in Egypt, visit the City of the Dead (Cairo), the photo of which does not give a complete picture of the true beauty of this area. Once on its streets, you will feel like a character from "A Thousand and One Nights".

Cairo, the capital of Egypt, combines the features of a modern metropolis and an ancient city, where "oases" of ancient culture and history are found everywhere. As a vivid example of such an “oasis”, one can cite the city of the dead, or, as it is called locals, al Qarafa ("cemetery"). This ancient burial site stretches for 6 km from the south to the north of Cairo and goes around the capital of Egypt on the east side.

Note to tourists

Citadel Hill divides the ancient cemetery of Cairo into southern and northern parts. Here you can find many monuments of the Mamluk period of Egyptian history. The Cairo City of the Dead is one of the oldest cemeteries known to man on the planet. Its age is over 2000 years old. Here are buried both ordinary citizens and the nobility, up to the sultans. Single graves and many family mausoleums have been living together in this necropolis for many years now. The city of the dead in Cairo is quite interesting for its architecture. However, the city of the dead is not often visited by owners of tours to Egypt, especially from European countries.
You can start a sightseeing tour of the city of the dead in Cairo from anywhere, but it’s worth planning a route by climbing a hill, since it’s quite difficult to navigate while being directly on the necropolis. The northern part of the ancient cemetery of Cairo keeps on its land such historical monuments as the mausoleum, mosque and khanaka of Sultan Inal, the mausoleum and mosque of Faraj Barquq, the complexes of Barsbey and Sultan Qaitbey. In the southern part, there are mainly mausoleums of the "river" bakhri Mamluks, and sometimes you can even find buildings from the time of the Fatimids. It should be noted that here, as a rule, the age of the monuments is older than in the north of the necropolis.

Interesting information

The main feature of the Cairo necropolis is that here, strange as it may sound, life is in full swing, and this is not an exaggeration. Shops and houses were built in the necropolis, people work and live here, cars and buses drive. Some residents of the city of the dead settled here to be closer to their dead ancestors, close people. For some, living in a necropolis is due to the inability to provide themselves with housing in another part of the city.
It's hard to believe, but many people live right in the crypts. According to some reports, more than 10 thousand people live here, forming a kind of "city within a city." Very often, the homeless live in crypts, having received the consent of the relatives of the deceased, and at the same time keep order in the burials. A significant part of the necropolis is maintained in good condition, probably largely due to the fact that people live here. By the way, there is less garbage here than on some central streets in Cairo.
The trend towards the settlement of the cemetery arose in the 60s of the 20th century - beggars settled here, as well as refugees from the Suez Canal area. Soon, the scale of the settlement began to take on a threatening character, but the Egyptian government managed to cope with the situation, and some people were provided with housing behind the oldest cemetery in Cairo. As the number of inhabitants grew, so did the number of burials - the settlers eventually filled the tombs with themselves, which is facilitated by, among other factors high level mortality in Egypt. This conclusion suggests itself due to the fact that in old photographs the mausoleums are located quite freely.