Azbakeya

Azbakeya (Arabic: أزبكية‎‎; also spelled El Azbakeya) is one of the districts of Cairo, Egypt in the centre of Cairo, and contains many historically important establishments. One of these is the Saint Mark's Coptic Orthodox Cathedral (Azbakeya), which was inaugurated by Pope Mark VIII in 1800 and served as the seat of the Coptic Pope in Cairo from 1800 to 1971. Azbakeya was the place where the first Cairo Opera House was established, until it was burnt in 1970.

By the time of Barquq, the first Circassian Mamluk Sultan (1382- 1399 AD), a lot of reconstruction needed to be done within the walls of the city in order to repair the damages incurred as a result of the plague. In 1384 AD, when Barquq started his madrassa in Bayn al-Qasrayn, markets were rebuilt, and Khan al-Khalili, the most famous touristic market in Cairo, was established.

The Maqrisi showed that the northern cemetery, founded by al-Nasir Muhammad, contained no building at all before his third reign. When al-Nasir Muhammad in 1320 abandoned the area between Bab al-Nasr cemetery and Muqattam, a small number of buildings started to be built in the northern cemetery.

Under the Burji Mamluks, northern cemetery became the new area targeted for the any new city expansion, since no ideological oppositions were found preventing the construction of dwelling within cemeteries. The lack of opposition allowed for the construction of striking religious buildings of monumental scale in the northern cemetery. Examples include Khanqa of Faraj Ibn Barquq, Madrasas of Inal, Qurqumas, Barsbay and Qaitbay .

During the latter half of the 15th century, two final major transformations took place in Cairo: the port of Bulaq, and a district called Azbakeya in the northwest section of the city. The parameters of the city had been unchanged for the past 300 years according to the map done by the French expedition in (1798 AD) With Baybars's conquest of Cyprus in 1428, Bulaq became the major port of Cairo. By the end of the 15th century, Bulaq was even able to take over the role as the major commercial port from Old Cairo.

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