Cairo, Egypt

Cairo was founded in 969 AD by the Fatimid dynasty. The city has a population of over 9 million spread over 3,085 square kilometers. The Cairo Metro is one of the only two metro systems in Africa. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab world.

About Cairo, Egypt in brief

Summary Cairo, EgyptCairo was founded in 969 AD by the Fatimid dynasty. The city has a population of over 9 million spread over 3,085 square kilometers. The Cairo Metro is one of the only two metro systems in Africa. The economy of Cairo was ranked first in the Middle East in 2005, and 43rd globally on Foreign Policy’s 2010 Global Cities Index. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab world, as well as the world’s second-oldest institution of higher learning, Al-Azhar University. Cairo is associated with ancient Egypt, as the famous Giza pyramid complex and the ancient city of Memphis are located in its geographical area. The area around present-day Cairo, especially Memphis, had long been a focal point of Ancient Egypt, due to its strategic location upstream from the Nile Delta. Many of Cairo’s oldest churches are located along the walls of a fortress, known as Babylon, which is the oldest structure in the city today. It is also situated at the nucleus of the Coptic community, which separated from the Roman Orthodox community in the late 4th century. The oldest Coptic church is located at the Hanging Church in Cairo, along the banks of the Nile. The Nile Delta is also the location of the oldest Christian church in the world, situated along the bank of the River Nile. It was established by the Romans in the 4th Century, and is situated along a series of walls, including the fortress of Hanging, which was built in the 5th century and is also located at Cairo’s outskirts.

The Egyptian Arabic name for the city is Maṣr, which means Egypt in Coptic, the same way it’s referred to in Egyptian Arabic. Egyptians often refer to Cairo as Maţr ; Egyptian Arabic: مَصر‎), the Egyptian Arabicname for Egypt itself, emphasizing the city’s importance for the country. Some argue that Mistram or Nistram is another Coptic name for Cairo, although others think that it’s rather a name of an Abbasid capital Al-Askar. The location of Heliopolis is the suburb of Ain Shams. There are a few Coptic names of the city, such as Lioui or Elioui, which are a corruption of Greek name ofheliopolis. Cairo, like many other megacities, suffers from high levels of pollution and traffic, with over 1 billion annual passenger rides. Cairo is titled \”the city of a thousand minarets\” for its preponderance of Islamic architecture. It also has a popular modern rendering of an Arabic name which has a folk etymology \”land of sun\”, which is akin to Arabic al-Qāhirah’s (pronounced “man breaker”), which means “the Conqueror” or “the Vanquisher” The city is also referred to as Kayro by people from Alexandria ; Egyptian Arab: “Kayro”