Just
to the south of the modern city's location
are the ruins of Memphis, which was the
capital of Ancient Egypt and was founded
in around 3100 BC by Menes of Tanis after
he had united the two kingdoms of Upper
and Lower Egypt, although the capital
later moved to Heliopolis, further south
to Thebes, and, under the Ptolemaic dynasty,
Alexandria. The first settlement on the
location of modern Cairo was a Roman fort,
known as Babylon Fort, built about AD
150, built near the settlement known as
Babylon-in-Egypt, which lay close to an
ancient Egyptian canal from the Nile to
the Red Sea. A small town mostly of Coptic
Christians slowly grew around the fort.
Arab invaders, lead by Amr Ibn-el-As,
took the fort town in 642 and also established
their army in the location, rebuilding
its defenses.
The
Arab tented camp outside the fortress,
known as Al-Fustat, slowly became the
permanent base of the Arab forces in Egypt
under the Umayyads and Abbasids, and contains
the first mosque in Africa. Slowly, the
settlement grew into a small city. The
North African Shiite Fatimid Dynasty conquered
Egypt in 972 and built a new capital,
Al-Mansureya, north of the old settlement.
Their leader, Al-Muez Ledin-Ellah, renamed
the city Al-Qahirah after the planet Mars
which was rising on the day the city was
founded. The Al-Azhar mosque was founded
the same year, and along with its accompanying
university it made Cairo a centre of learning
and philosophy. The school remains a major
center for Islamic study today. The Seljuks
captured Cairo in the mid 1100s, and Saladin
and his successors expanded the city further,
including the construction of its massive
citadel.
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