Cairo is the capital of Egypt and the city-state Cairo Governorate, and is the country's largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metropolitan area, with a population of 21.9 million, is the 12th-largest in the world by population. Cairo is associated with ancient Egypt, as the Giza pyramid complex and the ancient cities of Memphis and Heliopolis are located in its geographical area. Located near the Nile Delta, the city first developed as Fustat, a settlement founded after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 640 next to an existing ancient Roman fortress, Babylon. Under the Fatimid dynasty a new city, al-Qāhirah, was founded nearby in 969. It later superseded Fustat as the main urban centre during the Ayyubid and Mamluk periods. Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life, and is titled "the city of a thousand minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture. Cairo's historic center was awarded World Heritage Site status in 1979. Cairo is considered a World City with a "Beta +" classification according to GaWC.
A caravanserai was a roadside inn where travelers (caravaners) could rest and recover from the day's journey. Caravanserais supported the flow of commerce, information and people across the network of trade routes covering Asia, North Africa and Southeast Europe, most notably the Silk Road. Often located along rural roads in the countryside, urban versions of caravanserais were also historically common in cities throughout the Islamic world, and were often called other names such as khan, wikala, or funduq.
Fusṭāṭ, also Al-Fusṭāṭ and Fosṭāṭ, was the first capital of Egypt under Muslim rule, and the historical centre of modern Cairo. It was built adjacent to what is now known as Old Cairo by the Rashidun Muslim general 'Amr ibn al-'As immediately after the Muslim conquest of Egypt in AD 641, and featured the Mosque of Amr, the first mosque built in Egypt.
The College of Environmental Design, also known as the Berkeley CED, or simply CED, is one of fourteen schools and colleges at the University of California, Berkeley. The school is located in Bauer Wurster Hall on the southeast corner of the main UC Berkeley campus. It is composed of three departments: the Department of Architecture, the Department of City and Regional Planning, and the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning.
Ancient Egyptian architecture is best known for its monumental temples and tombs built in stone, including its famous pyramids, such as the pyramids of Giza. These were built with a distinctive repertoire of elements including pylon gateways, hypostyle halls, obelisks, and hieroglyphic decoration. The advent of Greek Ptolemaic rule, followed by Roman rule, introduced elements of Greco-Roman architecture into Egypt, especially in the capital city of Alexandria. After this came Coptic architecture, including early Christian architecture, which continued to feel ancient classical and Byzantine influences.
European Islam is a hypothesized new branch of Islam that historically originated and developed among the indigenous White European peoples of the Balkans and some republics of Russia, which constitute of large populations of native White European Slavic Muslims, alongside Muslim populations of Albanians, Greeks, Romani, Balkan Turks, Pomaks, Yörüks, Volga Tatars, Crimean Tatars, and Megleno-Romanians from Notia today living in Turkey, although the majority are secular.
The Beshtak Palace or Qasr Bashtak is a historic palace and museum in Cairo, Egypt, built by the Mamluk amir Sayf al-Din Bashtak al-Nasiri in the 14th century. It is located on Shari'a al-Mu'izz, in the area known as Bayn al-Qasrayn.
Jamel Akbar is an architect, educator, and theorist. His theoretical contributions are in the field of the built environment. His major contribution is in measuring the quality of the built environment through concepts such as responsibility, control, ownership and interventions. His work concentrates on humans' and properties’ rights among individuals, institutions and the State. By comparing such rights in different cultures he developed conclusions concerning economic and social settings and their ramifications on the quality of the built environment.
Bayn al-Qasrayn is the district and plaza between two former palace complexes constructed in the 10th century by the Fatimid dynasty in medieval Islamic Cairo, within present day Cairo, Egypt. It was an original element in the Fatimid Caliphate's plan for a new palace-city, named al-Qahirah, and later became the site of many monumental buildings constructed in the Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman periods, even up to the 19th century. Many of these structures from different periods survive in the area today, located along what is now called al-Mu'izz Street.
Ananya Roy is a scholar of international development and global urbanism. Born in Calcutta, India (1970), Roy is Professor and Meyer and Renee Luskin Chair in Inequality and Democracy at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. She has been a professor of City and Regional Planning and Distinguished Chair in Global Poverty and Practice at the University of California, Berkeley. She holds a Bachelor of Comparative Urban Studies (1992) degree from Mills College, and Master of City Planning (1994) and Doctor of Philosophy (1999) degrees from the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley.
Soumyen Bandyopadhyay is an architect and architectural historian at Liverpool University where he is head of department and holds the Sir James Stirling Chair in Architecture. He has previously held professorial positions at the Manchester School of Architecture (MSA) and Nottingham Trent University.
The funerary complex of Sultan Qaytbay is an architectural complex built by Sultan al-Ashraf Qaytbay in Cairo's Northern Cemetery, completed in 1474. It is often considered one of the most beautiful and accomplished monuments of late Egyptian Mamluk architecture, and is pictured on the Egyptian one pound note.
Jean Paul Bourdier is a photographer and Professor of Architecture, Photography and Visual Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
The Wikala of Sultan Qansuh al-Ghuri is a caravanserai in the medieval center of Cairo, Egypt. It was built in 1504–1505 CE and is considered today one of the most impressive and best-preserved examples of this type of building in Cairo.
Jos Boys is an architect, activist, educator, and writer. She was a founder member of Matrix Feminist Design Co-operative and co-author of their 1984 book Making Space: Women and the Man-Made Environment. Since 2008 she has been co-director of The DisOrdinary Architecture Project with disabled artist Zoe Partington, a disability-led platform that works with disabled artists to explore new ways to think about disability in architectural and design discourse and practice.
Mohamed Makiya was an Iraqi architect and one of the first Iraqis to gain formal qualifications in architecture. He is noted for establishing Iraq's first department of architecture at the University of Baghdad and for his architectural designs which incorporated Islamic motifs such as calligraphy in an effort to combine Arabic architectural elements within contemporary works.
Thérèse Frances Tierney is an American urbanist, network theorist, and educator. She is the director of the Urban Research Lab at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign.
Vishaan Chakrabarti is an American architect and professor. He is the founder of Practice for Architecture and Urbanism (PAU), which is an architecture firm based in New York. In 2018 he was named a fellow of the American Institute of Architects. For a period of one year, from July 2020 to September 2021, Chakrabarti served as the Dean at the College of Environmental Design at UC Berkeley.
Rami Daher is a Jordanian architect, academic, and public intellectual specializing in architectural conservation and urban design. He is currently an associate professor at the School of Architecture and Built Environment at the German Jordanian University and general director of TURATH, an architectural and urban design consultancy in Amman, which has executed several major interventions in historic and heritage settings.
A joggle is a joint or projection that interlocks blocks. Often joggles are semicircular and knob-shaped, so joggled stones have a jigsaw- or zigzag-like pattern.
