City of the Dead (Cairo)

The City of the Dead, or Cairo Necropolis (Qarafa, el-Arafa), is an Islamic necropolis and cemetery below the Mokattam Hills in southeastern Cairo, Egypt. The people of Cairo, the Cairenes, and most Egyptians, call it el'arafa (trans. 'the cemetery'). It is a 4 miles (6.4 km) long (north-south) dense grid of tomb and mausoleum structures, where some people live and work amongst the dead. Some reside here to be near ancestors, of recent to ancient lineage. Some live here after being forced from central Cairo due to urban renewal demolitions and urbanization pressures, that increased from the Gamal Abdel Nasser era in the 1950s and forward. Other residents immigrated in from the agricultural countryside, looking for work — an example of rural to urban migration in an LEDC (least economically developed country). The poorest live in the City of the Dead slum, and Manshiyat Naser, which is also known as Garbage City, a center of recycling and reuse Zabbaleen vendors.

The founding dates back to the Muslim conquest of Egypt in 642 AD. The Muslim Arab commander 'Amr ibn al-'As founded the first Islamic Egyptian capital, the city of Al Fustat, and established his family’s graveyard at the foot if the hill known as al Mokattam.The other families buried their dead within the living quarters. The following Islamic dynasties built their own political citadel to the north, founding a new graveyard. The commander’s family cemetery, the Great Qarafa and the Lesser Qarafa, have been inhabited since the first centuries after the conquest. Its first resident nucleus consisted of the custodians to nobles' graves and the staff in charge of the burial service as well as the Sufi mystics in their khawaniq (Sufi colleges).

During the Fatimid Caliphate, because of their Shi’ite faith, the sovereigns supported pilgrimages to Ahl al Bayt (Prophet’s family) shrines here. These pilgrimages increased the cemetery’s development to provide pilgrims’ needs. The following sultan, Salah el Din, in order to unify all the four capitals within a surrounding wall, included both cemeteries in a unique urban space.

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