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LETHAL THREAT TO THE HERITAGE OF CAIRO's CITY OF THE DEAD
- jakefarrella
- Jun 13, 2023
- 2 min read
13 June 2023
By Jake Austin
A few weeks ago, Twitter user @thebluecairo posted "Part of Cairo’s historical City of the Dead is being demolished to make way for a road. It’s heartbreaking and a lot of history is being lost forever."
As historical cities expand and face the demand to support new populations and industry, they often run across the issue of how to preserve historical districts and sites. There are many solutions to preserve the site and still develop, but there is only one wrong solution - the destruction of the heritage to promote highways and apartment buildings.
Such is the case in Cairo, where the historical City of the Dead is being targeted by development ordered by President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi. The City of the the Dead is one of the most unique UNESCO World Heritage Sites, due to a variety of issues. It contains everything from building-sized mausoleums containing the remains of noted Islamic scholars and artists hundreds of years ago to humble graves from recent generations. Furthermore, some people are permitted to live among and inside the necropolis, supposedly repairing mausoleums not visited in many years.
Planned highway development has lead to destroyed tombs and orders for families to move the remains of their relatives on short notice. Each building destroyed constitutes a risk to history, dignity of human remains, and housing. The initiative is unpopular. There was a successful recent campaign to save the tomb of the Egyptian novelist Taha Hussein.
Planned projects for the future also include an eight-lane highway across the plateau of the Pyramids of Giza, another UNESCO World Heritage site. It is only the will and voice of the people that can prevent the grinding gears of industry from scarring our shared patrimony.
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