For more than three years Mugamaa Al-Adian, the religious compound, of Old Cairo has stood almost empty. Streets that were once buzzing with tourists and souvenir traders are mostly abandoned. The area is one of the most important sites for understanding the history of the world's three great religions. In one small part of Old Cairo, the visitor will find the Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque, the Coptic Museum, the Hanging Church that stands atop the Roman fortress of Babylon, and the Ben Ezra Synagogue. After the 25 January Revolution the once steady flow of tourists and traders came to an abrupt end. Today there are police stations in front of the Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque and the Hanging Church. But there are signs that tourists and researchers may soon be returning to the mugamaa al-adian. Last week the minister of antiquities, Mamdouh Eldamaty, made an official visit to inspect the area and the Hanging Church. A restoration of the church was completed four years ago, but its re-opening was delayed because of the revolution. The church, like other monuments located in heavily populated areas, had suffered considerable damage from air pollution, rising groundwater, high humidity, and leakage of water from the century-old sewage system. There was also damage from the 1992 earthquake, which increased the number of cracks in the walls and foundations. The decorations on the church's wooden ceiling were also heavily stained with smoke. In 1997, the then Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA), now the Ministry of Antiquities, launched a comprehensive restoration project to preserve Egypt's Coptic sites and return the Hanging Church to its original splendour. The neighbouring Coptic Museum was also restored and an extension built to display new exhibits. The Ben Ezra Synagogue and Abi Serga Church were also repaired. “The restoration of the fourth-century Hanging Church finished in 2010 after 13 years of the building being hidden under scaffolding,” Eldamaty said during the tour, saying that the church will be re-opened in mid-October. The adjacent church of Abi Serga will also be inaugurated in December after completion of its restoration. Eldamaty announced that the entirety of the mugamaa al-adian, the area of the religious sites, will be closed off for pedestrians only, as is the case in Al-Muizz Street in Islamic Cairo, Mohamed Al-Sheikha, head of the Projects Section at the ministry, told Al-Ahram Weekly that the restoration work on the Hanging Church was carried out to the highest professional standards. He said that the official re-opening, originally planned for 2010, was put on hold due to the lack of security in the aftermath of the January Revolution, but that now it is safe for the building to be re-opened. The aim of the restoration, carried out in three phases, was to reduce water leakage into the church and strengthen its foundations against future damage. Similar work was done at the Babylon Fortress, he said. The walls were reinforced, missing and decayed stones replaced, and masonry cleaned and desalinated. “The church now stands as proudly as it did in the past,” Al-Sheikha said. The church's decorations and icons were restored in collaboration with Russian experts, and new lighting and ventilation systems have been installed. “Every effort has been made to ensure that all the original architectural features are retained,” Eldamaty said, adding that the restoration work was extended beyond the church's walls to include neighbouring monuments and surrounding streets, thanks to a budget of LE101 million. The streets have been refurbished to suit the area's monuments, including the Coptic Museum, the Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque, and the Mar Girgis and Abi Serga Churches, he said. Unfortunately, some areas are still in poor condition. Eldamaty said he intends to contact the Cairo governor in order to ensure that garbage around the area is removed. “Restoring the Hanging Church has two important advantages,” Eldamaty said. “Individual monuments are being preserved for future generations and the entire neighbourhood is being revived and upgraded. This will increase the ministry's income in the future, allowing it to restore other monuments.” The Hanging Church is the most famous Coptic Christian church in Cairo, as well as possibly the first built in the basilica style. It was built during the late fourth or early fifth centuries CE. However, the earliest mention of the church was made in a statement in the biography of the patriarch Joseph I (831-49), when the governor of Egypt visited the establishment. The church was largely rebuilt by Pope Abraham (975-78). In the eleventh century, during the tenure of Pope Christodolos, the seat of the Coptic Orthodox pope, originally in Alexandria, was transferred to the church when the authorities moved from Alexandria to Cairo following the Arab conquest. The Hanging Church was restored in the Islamic era during the rule of the caliphs Haroun Al-Rashid, Al-Aziz Bi'allah Al-Fatemi and Al-Zaher Al-Ezz Al-Din Allah. Elsewhere in the area, the Coptic Museum was refurbished and officially re-opened in 2006 after three years of restoration. The main structure of the museum blends Roman and Fatimid forms and was built by Morqos Semeika Pasha in 1910. By 1992 it had fallen into a state of disrepair. After the earthquake of that year the museum was closed for safety reasons, leaving only the new wing, added in 1947, open. In 2003 that too closed as the massive overhaul of the museum began. The building was in a critical condition when the restoration began. The walls of the old wing had developed cracks following the earthquake, the ceiling decorations were mostly hidden by layers of accumulated dirt and mashrabiya fittings over the windows were broken. The floor of the new wing had been partially ruined by rising groundwater and there were no emergency exits. To rescue the buildings, the foundations were consolidated and strengthened by micro-piles, with sharply pointed columns installed beneath the new wing. To improve visitor flow, the two wings were connected by a corridor and their levels adjusted. A hydraulic lift and wheelchair ramps were installed for disabled visitors. The wooden ceilings in the old wing were cleaned, revealing painted scenes of Venice and Istanbul. In collaboration with the American Research Centre in Egypt (ARCE), a team of Italian restorers consolidated, cleaned and conserved the museum's most important frescoes. Two new exhibition halls were created in the space between the wings. The first includes an atrium in which capitals from Saqqara were erected on replica columns. The display also includes a sixth-century pulpit. Rough, unfired mud bricks were used for parts of the walls of the atrium, replicating the environment in which the objects were originally found. The second hall is used for conferences and has a bookshop and small cafeteria. It connects to the Roman fortress and the Amr Ibn Al-Aas gate which, after the completion of the on-going drainage system project, will serve as the Coptic Museum's second entrance. Al-Sheikha said that the museum now has the latest security system, a restoration lab, a children's art school and a library, and the garden and fountain had been restored to their original splendour. The museum's displays have also been reordered and are now arranged according to region of origin, chronologically, or grouped together according to the objects' material. The restoration work extended to the Ben Ezra Synagogue, originally a sixth-century church near the old Roman fortress of Babylon. The synagogue was restored in collaboration with the Canadian Centre for Architecture and Restoration (CCAR). The CCAR carried out the synagogue's restoration between 1982 and 1991. Today there is a marble slab inscribed with the names of the benefactors and the sentence “Moses worshipped God here.” “In the ninth century CE, Egyptian Jews bought the ancient church and a large piece of land surrounding it and converted the whole area into a Jewish synagogue,” said Mohamed Mahgoub, former director of the archaeological area of Old Cairo. He pointed out that the synagogue became internationally famous when writings known as the Geniza Documents were discovered there, casting light on the community in mediaeval times. These documents, the Ben Ezra Geniza, were uncovered in 1890 when the ceiling of the storeroom collapsed. In 1892, Jacob Saphir, a Jewish researcher, took several thousand documents away and wrote a description of the storeroom and its contents. In 1894, documents dating back to the 11th and 12th centuries CE were removed. Today, the Taylor-Schechter Collection at the Cambridge University Library contains most of the rest of the Ben Ezra Documents, some 140,000 rare manuscripts and half a million other documents. Christian and Muslim influences are apparent in the synagogue's architecture and interior decoration. The former is evident in the basilica style, with the ceiling supported by 12 marble columns and decorative motifs including depictions of vines, sheaves of wheat and olive branches. Muslim influence can be seen in the carved woodwork and chandeliers; the name of the Sultan Qalawun is inscribed on one of the chandeliers. The Amr Ibn Al-Aas Mosque, the area's most distinguished Islamic monument, dates from 642 CE and was the first mosque to be built in Egypt. It has naturally undergone considerable changes over the past 13 centuries. Few, if any, of the original architectural elements remain. It has been restored twice in modern times, first in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. “The later restoration work corrected serious errors in the earlier restorations and in the extension to the mosque carried out in the time of the Mameluke emir Murad Bek in 1779,” said Abdallah Al-Attar, former head of the Islamic and Coptic Monuments Section at the Mnistry of Antiquities. The restoration work also stopped the leakage of subterranean water into the mosque. Special attention was given to the iwan al-qibla, the prayer hall, which has a raised floor and opens onto the main courtyard through arcades. “The columns of the iwan were dismantled, restored and re-erected in their original form. Damaged and fragile pillars that could not be satisfactorily consolidated were replaced by similar ones from the ministry stores,” Al-Attar said. A new lighting and security system was also installed, while the sewage system in the area surrounding the mosque was repaired. Finally, the Abi Serga Church, known as the Saint Sergius Church, is the oldest Coptic church in Egypt. It is one of the places where the holy family is believed to have hidden during the biblical flight into Egypt. It was also the place where many patriarchs of the Coptic Church were elected, among them the patriarch Isaac (681-692). The church was built in the fourth century and was dedicated to Sergius and Bacchus, soldier-saints martyred during the fourth century in Syria by the Roman emperor Maximian. It was burned during the fire in Al-Fustat, the new Arab quarter, during the reign of the caliph Marwan II around 750 CE. It was restored in the eighth century, and has been rebuilt and restored many times since. The most interesting feature is probably the crypt where Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus are said to have rested when they were in Egypt. The crypt is 10 metres deep and when Nile levels are high is often flooded. The restoration work focused on reducing the subsoil water in the tiny shrine beneath the altar and reinforcing the church's columns, walls, floors, tiles and ceiling.
