Visit to the Citadel

On my first full day in Cairo I was honoured to be collected by two of my amazing Egyptian friends, Mahmoud and Ayman, and spend the day exploring a piece of Cairo with them. After a walk through the now infamous Tahrir Square, which is very close to the hotel, we made our way to what is known as 'The Citadel', perhaps one of Cairo's oldest buildings, and rich in history, On the same site there are museums that I managed to miss on my previous visits to The Citadel, but are worth taking the time to see. If you are interested in military history, then the assortment of tanks and planes will definitely interest you, well preserved artifacts from wars that Egypt has been involved in, predominantly with Israel. I as enamoured with the brass plaques, for want of a better description, outlining history in this country, from the Pharaohs onwards, though bizarrely, former President Mubarak had placed himself at the centre of the story being unfold, as if he were claiming credit for all of it, here in 2012, the legacy of President Mubarak is now well known, and it won't make great history.

Courtesy of Wikipedia, I have included a little history of The Citadel and Museums, as outlined below. 

Medieval History

The Citadel was fortified by the Ayyubid ruler Salah al-Din (Saladin) between 1176 and 1183 CE, to protect it from the Crusaders. Only a few years after defeating the Fatimid Caliphate, Saladin set out to build a wall that would surround both Cairo and Fustat. Saladin is recorded as saying, "With a wall I will make the two [cities of Cairo and Fustat] into a unique whole, so that one army may defend them both; and I believe it is good to encircle them with a single wall from the bank of the Nile to the bank of the Nile." The Citadel would be the centerpiece of the wall. Built on a promontory beneath the Muqattam Hills, a setting that made it difficult to attack, the efficacy of the Citadel's location is further demonstrated by the fact that it remained the heart of Egyptian government until the 19th century. 

The citadel stopped being the seat of government when Egypt's ruler, Khedive Ismail, moved to his newly built Abdin Palace in the Ismailiya neighborhood in the 1860s. While the Citadel was completed in 1183-1184, the wall Saladin had envisioned was still under construction in 1238, long after his death.

To supply water to the Citadel, Saladin built the 280 feet (85 m) deep Well of Joseph, which can still be seen today. This well is also known as the Well of the Spiral because its entrance consisted of 300 stairs that wound around the inside of the well. Once water was raised from the well to the surface, it traveled to the Citadel on a series of aqueducts. During the reign of al-Nasir Muhammad, the Well of Joseph failed to produce enough water for the numerous animals and humans then living in the Citadel. To increase the volume of water, Nasir built a well system that consisted of a number of water wheels on the Nile, the water from which was then transported to the wall and subsequently to the Citadel, via the aqueducts Saladin had constructed.

The improvements to the Citadel's water supply were not Nasir's only additions to the Citadel, which was subject to a number of different additions during the Mamluk period. Nasir's most notable contribution was the Mosque of Nasir. In 1318 Nasir rebuilt the Ayyubid structure, turning it into a mosque in his name. The structure underwent further additions in 1335. Other contributions to the Citadel during Nasir's reign include the structure's southern enclosure (the northern enclosure was completed by Saladin) and the residential area, which included space for the harem and the courtyard. Prior to Nasir's work on the Citadel, the Baybars constructed the Hall of Justice and the "House of Gold.

19th Century History

The Citadel is sometimes referred to as Mohamed Ali Citadel because it contains the Mosque of Muhammad Ali of (or Mohamed Ali Pasha), which was built between 1828 and 1848, perched on the summit of the citadel. 

This Ottoman mosque was built in memory of Tusun Pasha, Muhammad Ali's second son who died in 1816. However, it also represents Muhammad Ali's efforts to erase symbols of the Mamluk dynasty that he replaced. When Ottoman ruler Muhammad Ali Pasha took control from the Mamluks in 1805 he altered many of the additions to the Citadel that reflected Cairo's previous leaders. One obvious change that Muhammad Ali enacted pertained to the uses of the Citadel's northern and southern enclosures. During the Mamluk period the southern enclosure was the residential area, but Muhammad Ali claimed the northern enclosure as the royal residence when he took power. He then opened the southern enclosure to the public and effectively established his position as the new leader.

The mosque is the other feature of the Citadel that reflects the reign of Muhammad Ali. This feature, with its large dome and overtly Ottoman influenced architecture, looms over the Citadel to this day. 

Recently destroyed Mamluk palaces within the Citadel provided space for the formidable mosque, which was the largest structure to be established in the early 19th century. Placing the mosque where the Mamluks had once reigned was an obvious effort to erase the memory of the older rulers and establish the importance of the new leader. The mosque also replaced the mosque of al-Nasir as the official state mosque.

There are two other mosques at the Citadel, the 13th/14th c. hypostyle Al-Nasir Muhammad Qala'un Mosque from the early Bahri Mamluk period, and the 16th c. Mosque of Suleyman Pasha, first of the Citadel's Ottoman-style mosques.

Al-Gawhara Palace (Qasr al-Gawhara), also known as Bijou Palace, is a palace and museum in Cairo, Egypt. The palace is situated south of the Mosque of Muhammad Ali in the Cairo Citadel. It was commissioned by Mohammed Ali Pasha in 1814.

The palace designed and constructed by artisans contracted from a variety of countries, including Greeks, Turks, Bulgarians and Albanians. The artisans constructed a variety of elements as part of the palace complex: "barracks, schools, an arsenal, a gun-powder factory and a mint." The palace was constructed as a two-storey pavilion in the style of a Turkish kushk. It has Western style windows which were often topped with an oval oeil-de-boeuf. The French architect and engineer Pascal Coste was employed to add the residential quarters for the palace servants and functionaries. On one side of the palace was a haush (courtyard) and on the other, were views of the pyramids and the Nile.

In 1822, a fire destroyed the palace's wooden construction in a blaze that lasted for 2 days. Later, Mohamed Ali had the structure expanded and elaborated upon with the construction of "a large marble fountain, columned stone terraces and porticoes, parterres of flower beds and orange groves, and even a menagerie containing a lion, two tigers and an elephant, a gift of the British Lord Hastings."

Two years later, in 1824, fire again damaged the palace after explosions of gunpowder. Mohamed Ali imported large slabs of marble from Italy to build a vestibule, staircase and corridors.

In 1825, English traveller Anne Catherine Elwood described the opulence of the palace, and in particular its grand room that could "offer dancing, had deep niches for conversation, and side rooms for music, reading, games and refreshment."

Mohamed Ali's official divan or audience hall, where the pasha received guests, contains a 1000kg chandelier sent to him by Louis-Philippe I of France. Some of the paintings in the Pasha hall of the palace portray the receiving of foreign ambassadors.

The palace also contains the throne of Mohammed Ali Pasha that was a gift from the King of Italy

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