Al-Ahram Weekly | Egypt | A final warning?

		12 - 18 September 2002 Issue No. 603 Home news	Current issue Previous issue Site map
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875		Recommend this page

A final warning?
Urban encroachment in Old Cairo continues to threaten Islamic monuments. Nevine El-Aref looks at what precautions can be taken

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The Musafirkhana was destroyed by fire two years ago
Mediaeval Cairo with its splendid Islamic monuments and exquisite oriental architecture, the setting of some of the tales of A Thousand and One Nights, is in danger of becoming a pile of ashes, according to experts.
Last week fire struck 25 workshops on the south side of the Farag Ibn Barquq complex and could have led to the devastation of some of Cairo's outstanding Islamic buildings. Fortunately the blaze was extinguished before it did much harm and before yet another vestige of our past bit the dust.
"The blaze was quickly contained, which averted a major disaster for an important chapter of our heritage," Culture Minister Farouk Hosni said. It was one of the most dangerous and aggressive fires to hit Old Cairo. "If the fire had not been controlled it could have destroyed the Ibn Barquq complex and might have spread to several neighbouring historical complexes, including the sabil-kuttab (water fountain and school) and mosque of Qalawun, the Al-Kamilliya school, the sabil of Mohamed Ali, the sabil- kuttab of Al-Nasser Mohamed, the sabil of Khesru Pasha and the resthouse of Muhibeddin Abul-Tayyeb."
Hosni said the fire was caused by butane cylinders used in the workshops. "I hope this will be a last warning to the authorities concerned [the Ministry of Religious Endowments (Awqaf) and the Cairo governorate] to take serious steps toward removing all the encroachments, which can be called time bombs set to explode anytime," Hosni commented.
"This is not the first disaster to hit Mediaeval Cairo," Ayman Abdel-Moneim, director of the Documentation Centre of Historic Cairo, said. He said a blaze two years ago destroyed the Musafirkhana, an Ottoman Islamic monument in a distinguished architectural style located in Darb Al- Tablawi in the Old Gamaliya district. The blaze began in a garbage heap behind the building and quickly spread to a wooden gate and wooden scaffolding erected to support the building after it suffered damage in the 1992 earthquake. A week after this catastrophe, the three unique 18th-century Ottoman palaces of Ismail El-Mufattesh in Cairo's Lazughli area were threatened by fire, as were the Radwan houses and Al- Hakim Biamrellah Mosque in Fatimid Cairo.
"Conflagrations seem to be a frequent problem in historic Cairo," said Abdel- Moneim, adding that the spread of the modern city into older parts of Cairo, including administrative buildings, government offices, commercial establishments and workshops, posed a threat to the Islamic monuments in the area. Al-Muizz Street, for example, housed 630 Islamic monuments, many of them used as government offices and for commerce. The problem is that the Ministry of Religious Endowments, which owns and controls the monuments, uses them as ordinary buildings and not as historical sites or part of the national heritage listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The Ministry of Culture is only empowered to maintain and restore these monuments.
Four years ago, since the beginning of the major restoration project to develop historic Cairo into an open-air museum, the ministry requested the removal of all these encroachments but nothing has yet changed.
"This disaster could easily happen again because the whole historical area is suffering from encroachment and is threatened by the accumulation of garbage in the streets," Abdel-Moneim said.
Islamic architecture professor Hosni Nowesar added that all the Islamic monuments were located in narrow streets only two yards wide, which prevented fire fighters from having easy access. "To control blazes a number of fire extinguishers must be provided in each monument and an up-to-date urban survey must be carried out quickly. Wider streets should be paved and allow the easy passage of fire engines and ambulances."
However Abdallah El-Attar, head of the Islamic and Coptic Antiquities department at the Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), said all the monuments were equipped with fire extinguishers which explained why this blaze did not spread to the Ibn Barquq complex. "But all the security measures taken by the SCA are useless if these workshops still exist in the historical zone and still use butane cylinders," El- Attar said.
He added that the SCA alone would not be able to solve the problem but would need to collaborate with the Ministry of Religious Endowments and the Cairo governorate. He warned that another blaze in the area could destroy at least 120 magnificent Islamic monuments, as well as historical buildings in Al-Saliba Street, Bab Al-Wazir, and both areas of Al-Khayamiya and Souq Al-Selah.
Mukhtar El-Kassabani, a member of the executive board of historic Cairo's development project, sees the uncontrolled number of licences for workshops issued by the local administrative board -- without the application of industrial safety conditions -- as the main cause of the fires that hit the area every now and then.
"And in no time fire could damage all the restoration by the Ministry of Culture," he said.
In an attempt to ease the problem with Islamic sites Zahi Hawass, secretary-general of the SCA, has established an SCA- affiliated agency to clean up the surrounding areas. "Daily cleaning of the historic zone is in operation to remove dust and garbage from the monuments," Hawass said.
El-Attar said the complex of Farag Ibn Barquq contained some of Cairo's major monuments. One of the three outstanding structures of the northern cemetery is a tomb, a khanqah (an institution for Muslim mystics or holy men) and a kuttab (Qur'anic school).
The focal point of the monument is the khanqah which has as its basic plan arcades leading off a central court, little different from a congregational mosque. The kuttab with its pleasant front entrance is on the second floor, while the mausoleum stands at the northern side of the complex. This consists of two chambers; one is the burial place for Sultan Farag Ibn Barquq, his brother Abdel-Aziz and an unknown person. The second was used to bury women of Barquq's family. The mausoleum has two large domes, the earliest stone domes of this size in Cairo. Their enormous span -- more than 14 metres -- marks a high point of Mameluke engineering.
To the north of Barquq's mausoleum is the tomb of his father Anas, whom he brought from the Caucasus. The building was joined to the mausoleum by an arcade, now in ruin.
Barquq, described by the 15th-century historian Al-Maqrizi as the "most tragic king of Egypt", ascended the throne at the age of ten, but at 23 was deposed and killed in Damascus.

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