‘Sects’ and the City: Landscape and Religious Diversity in the Fatimid Capital and its Environs

For almost a century following the foundation of Cairo, Egypt enjoyed a period of economic prosperity that, coupled with political and administrative stability, contributed, notwithstanding a broader demographic decline that had affected Egypt and Syria since the eighth century, to a relative growth in urban population. The famous Fatimid physician Ibn Ridwan provides us with a vivid description of eleventh-century living conditions amongst the people inhabiting the main sections of the Fatimid capital: Fustat, al-Qarafa and Cairo. Fustat is portrayed as the most crowded and worst part of the city to live in, owing to the poor quality of air made stagnant by the narrowness of the alleys flanked by high-storey buildings, particularly around the 'Amr b. al-'As Mosque, and contaminated by rotting carcasses of animals and rubbish in the streets. Pollution extended to the water supply, as people would deposit animal faeces and sewage into the stretch of the Nile nearer to Fustat, to the extent of affecting the flow of the river. If Ibn Ridwan was unimpressed by the sanitary conditions of Fustat, Nasir-i Khusraw was by contrast enthusiastic about its vibrancy. He described the market of the lamps by the 'Amr mosque as unequalled in any country, with some of its alleys covered and lit by lamps during the day.