When historians look back, two or three decades from now, to the current world turbulence, they will have no trouble labelling it correctly: World War III.
So why are we still hesitant to use this term? There are at least ten regular armies involved (...)
In the popular mythology of East-West politics, 9/11 was the opening shot in a global war against terrorism. The proponents of this view consider Islamic-motivated terror to be a crime that must be stopped by everyone in the East and West, an (...)
Egypt's unfolding story involves two subplots which intersect, interweave, and overlap, but each has a life of its own. These are political Islam and democracy.
Without political Islam, political rivalries that could have been settled calmly in (...)
To the west of the Umayyad Mosque in Aleppo, there is a narrow street, cobbled and unassuming and generally a good place to get jostled. But it had two attractions for me and my wife, who used to live less than half a mile away to the south, at the (...)
Two legends are told about this mosque-mausoleum on the south-western edge of the Moqattam hills.
One is that the man who commissioned it, Badr Al-Gemali, the Armenian who was the country's de factor ruler under the Fatimid Caliph Al-Mustansir, (...)
Sinai used to be a land of equal opportunity, a place where people went to start a new life, to get away from the crowded Nile Valley, to escape the tensions of big cities, to avoid the country's widespread joblessness and to try something new. For (...)
When you visit A-Hakim Mosque at the northernmost spot of Fatimid Cairo, look for signs of madness. Look hard, for true madness has a tendency to conceal itself from viewers, even madness that is set in stone.
At the western wall of the mosque, you (...)
##R#A popular destination for religious as well as mundane tourists, the Shrine and Mosque of Sidna al-Hussein is at the heart of Fatimid Cairo, and apart from its spiritual value, the building is of interest because of the incredible layers of (...)
##R#In the accompanying photo, taken by K.A.C. Creswell or one of his associates circa 1920, you see the oldest of the Hussein Mosque's minarets, build around 1235 by a pious dignitary called al-Zarzur. Embellished with the carved ornaments common (...)
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The house on the right in this photo is gone now, removed to allow the mosque to be expanded in the western direction, toward Khan al-Khalili. The house is built in the Ottoman style, with the first floor thrust outwards on wooden beams and (...)
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The man you see in front of this photo, taken circa 1920 by K.A.C. Creswell or one of his associates, doesn't seem to be intent on making a sartorial statement. He is perhaps just out of visiting the holy shrine of Hussein, on his way to visit (...)
No one wants to associate with it these days. The $3.5 million study that outlined Cairo's problems and the way to deal with them for the next generation or so is metaphorically in the dock along with the major figures of the NDP. In real life, the (...)
Two or three years ago, in frustration over the exact location of Suq al-Shamma', Darb El-Qanadil, Birket El-Habash, Birket El-Haj and Gabal El-Rasd, I started plotting the names on a large sheet of paper, producing a rudimentary map which I kept (...)
When an art form dies, a word is lost from our vocabulary and a symbol is lost from our magical past.
Take for example the hand-carved carpentry of Egyptian doors in the late nineteenth century, or the carved masonry of stone houses of the same (...)
Half of the charm of Cairo's downtown is in its past. There are so many memories lingering at every street corner: the display cabinets with the gilded French phrases in pharmacies that haven't renovated since WWII, the forgotten advertising of an (...)
Of the dozen or so books that have so far dealt with the Egyptian revolution, “Messages from Tahrir” is going to be one of the most enjoyably durable. A generation or so down the line, it may even turn into a collector's item. One reason is that it (...)
Once upon a time, a young Frenchman came to Cairo to seek his fortune. His name was Alphonse de Gleon (1843-1899) and he settled in Ismailia, Cairo's up-and-coming neighbourhood now best known as Downtown. Soon, he made a fortune selling ice and (...)
When you stand at the intersection of Qasr el-Nil and Sherif today, what you see right across from the central bank is a multi-story building that was, when it was built in 1936, the pride and joy of downtown Cairo
It doesn't look as imposing today (...)
It is common to hear people nag about the damage being done to the architectural fabric of downtown, the disfigurement of ground floor facades, the gaudy advertising and the random renovation of the exteriors. These are all good arguments and (...)
"The name of Darb 1718 art space, was something of an insider's joke," explained Moataz Nasr, owner of Darb. The 17-18 January uprisingin 1977 was a nationwide bread riot that almost brought down the government, a precursor of the 25 January (...)
Amr Moussa has decided to leave the Arab League in hopes of becoming Egypt's first freely-elected president. According to at least one poll, he may win and I'm sure would make a fine president. But I have a better job for him.
The Arab League is (...)
Mubarak is now out of the picture, perhaps by orders of his vice president. He is not going to be part of the future of this country. He will either leave Egypt in an “honourable” way, or just be pushed to the back to sign papers and rolled out on (...)
When the counterrevolutionary clouds gathered over Cairo, the army acted like an accomplice seeking an alibi. The anonymous text messages it kept releasing to the public came thick and hard, meaningless and purposeless, like the pitches of desperate (...)
Frankly, I didn't know where to begin. Ahmad Rashad, future king of the Greater Middle East, was sitting on my sofa watching television and waiting for his education to commence. He'd just eaten 12 eggs, nine sausages, and 14 pancakes for breakfast (...)
I've had it with the leftists. All this mumbo jumbo about human rights, empowering women, and the rights of the Islamists to run for office is not only bad for the nation, it's bad for business, bad for our cholesterol, disruptive, and generally not (...)