Imbaba

Imbaba
An old photo of the Imbaba bridge
Imbaba Location in Egypt
Coordinates: 30°5′33″N 31°12′2″E / 30.09250°N 31.20056°E / 30.09250; 31.20056Coordinates: 30°5′33″N 31°12′2″E / 30.09250°N 31.20056°E / 30.09250; 31.20056
Country	Egypt
Governorate	Giza Governorate
Population
• Total	373,000
Time zone	EST (UTC+2)

Imbaba (Egyptian Arabic: إمبابه‎‎, IPA: [emˈbæːbæ]) is a neighbourhood in northern Giza, Egypt, located west of the Nile and northwest of and near Gezira Island and downtown Cairo, within the Giza Governorate. The district is located in the historic upper Nile Delta, and is part of the Greater Cairo metropolitan area.

Imbaba is also the name of an adjacent administrative centre (مركز) in rural Giza Governorate, which has 19 villages in its jurisdiction.

For centuries Imbaba was the final destination for camels brought from as far as Sudan and the Horn of Africa, to be sold in the village's Friday market. The market still exists, but is no longer as important as it was up to the turn of the 20th century due to increasing urbanisation.

In late 1992, the "Islamic Group" (al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya) expanded its influence in parts of Imbaba. In November, the group purportedly announced the establishment of the "Emirate of Imbaba" (some accounts claim that foreign news media coined the term, not the group itself). This challenge to the sovereignty of the Egyptian state triggered the siege of Imbaba, beginning on December 8, 1992. In its course, the government deployed over 12,000 police and State Security forces, along with one hundred personnel carriers and bulldozers, all of which put an end to the Emirate.

The Battle of the Pyramids, also known as the Battle of Embabeh, was a battle fought on July 21, 1798 between the French army in Egypt under Napoleon Bonaparte, and local Mamluk forces. It occurred during France's Egyptian Campaign and was the battle where Napoleon put into use one of his significant contributions to tactics, the massive divisional square. Napoleon named the battle after the Egyptian pyramids, although they were only faintly visible on the horizon when the battle took place.