The Trip That Keeps Growing

8 Oct Pre-tour Citadel and the Cave Church

This morning we had hoped to visit the new Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM) located near the Giza Pyramids. Unfortunately, because of Covid, it has not yet opened, which is a shame as most of the artifacts from the old Egyptian Museum have already been moved to their new home. This includes all of the artifacts found in King Tut’s tomb. It also houses King Khufu’s Solar Boat of Cheops, a large cedar-wood boat, measuring 142 feet long. This boat was discovered near the Great Pyramid of Giza and had remained there in a small museum until it was moved to the GEM. Also contained with this ruin are many of the implements used to build the boat. While no one knows the real purpose of the boat, two credible possibilities have been theorized. From examining the boat’s structure, archaeologists know that it did not contain a mast for sailing, and the oars that were built with the boat would not have been powerful enough to propel it through the river. The first theory is that Khufu built the boat to take him on his journey to the afterlife. The second is that the boat was only used once – to take Khufu’s body from the east side of the Nile where he was living to the west side where his pyramid awaited his body. Fortunately for us, we had seen King Tut’s treasures and the other artifacts on a previous trip to the Egyptian Museum in 2009.

So instead, we toured the Citadel, a massive medieval fortification initially built in 1176 AD during the rule of Saladin, the first Sultan of Egypt. Built on the top of Mokattam Hill, it was used as a defense against the Christian Crusaders from Europe. It continued to serve as a military fortress and the royal palace to Egypt’s rulers for 700 years (12^th century to the mid-19^th century). Subsequent rulers, including the Ottomans, further expanded it and added a new main gate, the Bab Al Azab. The Citadel has 3 mosques (Muhammed Ali Mosque, Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque, and the Sulayman Pasha Mosque, which we did not visit as it is across the highway from the Citadel), several palaces, harems, and a few terraces with a commanding view of Cairo and on a clear day, the Pyramids of Giza. The Muhammed Ali Mossque is the largest and grandest of the three. And you can recognize the Al-Nasir Muhammad Mosque, which was built by the Mamluks and is now used by soldiers, but the helmet top on the minarets. several palaces, harems, and a few terraces with a commanding view of Cairo and on a clear day, the Pyramids of Giza. Napoleon, who overthrew the Ottomans in Egypt in 1798, declared these buildings some of the finest Islamic monuments in Cairo. Napoleon’s reign over Egypt was short-lived and Egypt was soon returned to Ottoman control. The mosque that today dominates Cairo’s skyline was the work of the Mohammed Ali, an Albanian mercenary whose forces defeated the Ottoman and Mamluks in 1805. who came to power after the French were expelled. He also built one of the palaces, the Jewel Palace, in honor of his last wife. Mohammed Ali is buried in the white marble cenotaph inside the Mosque. As a testament to the Citadel’s design, Cairo has never been subjected to a siege in its history.

The Citadel became a military garrison after Mohammed Ali’s grandson Ismail moved his residence to the Abdeen Palace. During WWII, the Jewel Palace became the headquarters of the British army stationed in Egypt, and today, although most of the Citadel has been turned into a tourist attraction, the Egyptian Army still maintains a small presence there.

From the top of the Citadel you get a beautiful commanding view of Cairo. Although it appeared to be very smoggy by our standards, Dahlia said that we were lucky as we were able to see both the Giza Pyramids and the pyramids that we had seen at Dahshur. My camera was able to pick up the Giza pyramids, but unfortunately, the other pyramids were too light to capture.

Leaving the Citadel, we passed a very crowded Friday market. Here the locals come to buy whatever they need -- including pets and birds. We saw a lot of people carrying bird cages. We then drove to the other side of Mokattam Mountain to visit the Cave Church of the Zabbaleen, also called St. Simon Monastery, which was built into a cave on the side of this mountain. The area where the church is located is inhabited by a large group of garbage collectors (or Zabbaleen in Egyptian) who are descendants of farmers who migrated from the Upper Egypt area south of Aswan to this area in the Mokattam Mountain in southeastern Cairo in the 1940s. In order to reach the Cave Church, you have to drive on a narrow street through the Garbage City. What an experience! The buildings lining the street are filled with sorted bags of garbage. After collecting the garbage in trucks heavily loaded with trash (they look like there are so top heavy they should fall over), the Zabbaleens sort the trash and then sell the recyclables for money – China is their largest buyer of plastic. Many of the women also turn the trash into crafts that they sell to people walking by. The road is only wide enough for one van, but, hey, this is Egypt, so of course there is two-way traffic. You need to be a master driver to get through the area without any scratches!

The history of the Zabbaleens is interesting. When they first fled to Cairo from the Aswan region, they kept their traditions of raising animals. But it did not take them long to realize that it was far more profitable to sort the waste of the people living in Cairo (perhaps Cairo needs more Zabbaleens today!). They would keep the organic waste to feed their animals and salvage and sell any items of value that they found. As news of their success reached their family and friends still in their old villages in Upper Egypt, more and more people came to Cairo. As their numbers increased, the Cairo governor decided he needed to do something to control this new influx of people. In 1969, he moved all the garbage collectors to the area around Mokattam Mountain where today they number about 30,000. And today they still collect and recycle all of Cairo’s garbage and are one of Egypt’s largest Christian communities.

As you emerge from the Garbage City, you find yourself in the Monastery of St. Simon (also referred to as the Cave Church). There are seven cave churches or chapels that make up the Monastery, in addition to an educational center, a kindergarten school, and a school for the deaf.

You might ask why a mountain was chosen as the site for a church. As the story goes, Pope Abraham, the head of the Coptic Christian church in the late 900s AD, was asked by the reigning caliph, al-Muizz, to prove a scripture in the Bible that spoke about the faith of a mustard seed moving a mountain. In reply, Abraham asked for three days to prepare and went to the Hanging Church (located in Coptic Cairo which we will visit toward the end of this tour) and prayed to the Virgin Mary through an icon at the church. Appearing before him, the Virgin Mary told Abraham to find Simon the Tanner who could provide Abraham with the directions for moving the mountain. Using the words Simon the Tanner provided him, Abraham was able to move the mountain and satisfy al-Muizz.

While Mokattam Mountain is likely the mountain referenced in the story and Simon the Tanner is the same St. Simon for whom the monastery is named, the church itself was not built until 1976. The huge cave where the church is located was discovered in 1974, but had been filled with tons of stones which had to be removed before the church could be built. While other churches have since been carved into Mokattam, the Cave Church is the largest, and, with seats for 20,000 congregants, it is the largest church in the middle east.

As for the church itself, it is amazing. The sides of the cliffs and the inside of the church contain large carved reliefs and statues depicting scenes from the Bible and the life of Jesus. The height inside the church is 55’ from floor to ceiling and the seating is in a large amphitheater. At the entrance to the church is a dome that is decorated by three pieces made of small colored mosaics. All the other churches built into the cave are-interconnected.

After our visit we drove to Cairo’s largest park, Al Azhar, for lunch. Driving to the park we traveled through a large cemetery that Dahlia called the “City of the Dead,” which stretches about 4 miles on either side of the highway. While corpses are buried beneath the buildings in this cemetery, many of Cairo’s poor and/or homeless people make their homes in the buildings. Unfortunately, they do not have running water or electricity, but there are water spigots at the end of each street for the people to get fresh water.

At the park we ate outside at the Studio Misr restaurant, that had a beautiful view of the park with the Citadel in the background. It was fun to watch the children playing in the park and rolling down the hill on their last day before school started.

After the park, Dahlia took us to the Khan el-Khalili bazaar. This is a very large, crowded area filled with vendors selling everything from jewelry to clothing to spices and food to souvenirs. And at the front of each stall/store, the owners would be out hawking their wares. They all offer the “best and cheapest” prices, but as you are expected to barter when buying something, they have over inflated all their prices, so you are not really getting a good deal.

At the end of the day, we were dropped off at the Intercontinental Hotel and we had to say goodbye to Dahlia. She is an outstanding guide, and we really enjoyed the four days we spent with her, seeing unimaginably beautiful sights and learning more about the Ancient Egyptians. It was a wonderful prelude to our OAT trip which starts tomorrow.