Preview
Creation Year
January 1963
Image ID
E.074
Alternate Identifier
B05.074
Subcollection
E - Lower Egypt, Edfu, and Bodrum
Abstract
View of the Northern Cemetery, with silk spinning machines positioned in the foreground.
Description
"Stretching for some six kilometers on either side of the Citadel are the great cemeteries of Cairo. To the casual visitor coming in from the airport via the Citadel road, the Northern Cemetery, lying at the foot of the Muqattam Hills, seems cluttered and dusty, a jumble of buildings and satellite discs with interspersed domes rising up among them ... The Northern Cemetery is often wrongly called the ‘tombs of the caliphs.’ The Abbasid caliphs were buried in the great Southern Cemetery below Ibn Tulun’s Mosque, while the Fatimid caliphs were buried in the Eastern Palace of al-Qahira. This cemetery was developed primarily in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and it contains the tombs of the Mamluks." (Williams, 232-3).
References
Williams, Caroline. Islamic Monuments in Cairo: The Practical Guide. The American University in Cairo, 2002.
Image Notes
Creation date unknown. Photograph processed August 1960. Formerly cataloged as B05.074. Notes written on the slide of index: Tombs of Mamluks.
Image Format
35 mm slide
Geographic Reference
Cairo, Egypt
Keywords
Cemetery, Dome, Stone, Masonry, Arches, Relief Patterns, Fourteenth Century, Fifteenth Century, Mamluk
Rights Statement
