La Capitale de l'Egypte jusqu'a l'epoque fatimide, al-Qahira et al-Fustat: Essai de reconstitution topographique.

• Author: Walker, Paul E.
• Position: Review

La Capitale de l'Egypte jusqu'a l'epoque fatimide, al-Qahira et al-Fustat: Essai de reconstitution topographique. By AYMAN FU[congtains]AD SAYYLD. Beiruter Texte und Studien, vol. 48. Beirut and Stuttgart: FRANZ STEINER VERLAG, 1998. Pp. xl + 754, 26 Arabic. DM 196.

Although the errors in it are fairly easy to find and point out, it would be wrong to discount this massive study of Egypt's Islamic capital in its earliest phases simply by dwelling on these obvious mistakes. The editors of the distinguished series in which it appears, as volume forty-eight, offer a cautious but needed apology for problems encountered in producing it. Clearly there were serious difficulties and the final version shows many of them. Nevertheless, despite these faults, this is a quite impressive contribution by Dr. Ayman Fu[contains]ad Sayyid, a scholar who has done more work than any one else in recent years on the Fatimids in Egypt, including editing or reediting many of the major Arabic sources. He must be reckoned the most knowledgeable living authority on the very subject of this book; and we should be grateful in no small measure for what it contains.

The author set out to record in this one work everything that is known or can be ascertained on the basis of present information and sources about the area of Fustat and Cairo, the Islamic capitals, respectively, of pre-Fatimid and Fatimid Egypt. His subjects include all the places, buildings, and institutions within either city, and between and around them including the cemeteries adjacent to them. Even though he limited his study to the Fatimid period and what came prior to it, this task was formidable, more so than is commonly realized. That the Fatimids, following their conquest of Egypt in 358/969, founded the city that was to become modern Cairo is generally recognized. Even in the present day the city still contains monuments that presumably date to the Fatimid era. A flurry of recent restorations has made these same relics shine again with new, although not quite authentic, luster. In the popular imagination Fatimid Cairo continues thus to exist. The trouble with these images, as the careful document ation provided by Sayyid makes amply clear, is that hardly any trace of the original city and its many buildings survives. Most of those that are purportedly Fatimid do not date in their present form to the Fatimid period except in location and possibly in parts occasionally relocated elsewhere. While a...