A cat wanders by, leading to myself, the guard, my two friends, and the cat being the only occupants of the ruined city of Fustat on this particular day; it was originally home to roughly 200,000 people. This is an unexpected experience for Cairo solitude in the city.
The Medieval Capital
Fustat, the medieval capital of Egypt founded in 642 AD by General Amr Ibn el-As, was burnt to the ground (according to Arab tradition) roughly five hundred years later by order of the Vizier Shawar. Frankish crusaders were on their way, and he decided that it was better to have a razed city with a displaced population than a city under occupation. This must rank as one of the most unusual reactions to impending invasion ever concocted (but one that was also used by the Russians during the Napoleonic wars); I can imagine the messages passed down to the general population, We are facing the prospect of invasion and pillaging by the crusaders our defiant response is to burn our city to the ground and run; thatll showem. Everybody out by Monday. Yours Sincerely, the Authorities.
This might be a little unfair on Shawar; the Frankish crusader army, under Amalric I of Jerusalem, had already taken Bilbays, north of Cairo, on 5th November 1168 and horrifically massacred the population. After the massacre, Almaric taunted Shawar by stating that Bilbays was his cheese and Cairo his butter. Thus, Shawar, rightly fearing the assault of a dairy obsessed madman and not wanting a cheese-related metaphor from being applied to himself or Fustat for posterity, abandoned the city in order to save the population and stop it from being used as a base to attack Cairo. Given what happened at Bilbays there isnt any reason to suspect that the local people opposed his plan.
Tradition and Reality
The story of the absolute destruction of Fustat is, however, only a tradition; in reality the fire was likely limited in scope, restricted to churches attacked during anti-Christian riots, and so not directly connected to Amalrics invasion. There is little archaeological evidence that large scale burning occurred, and the city continued to exist after 1168, with rebuilding work recorded as carried out after the fire. The area was even included within the protection of Saladins city wall. Still though, over time, Cairo (founded in 969 AD) slowly overtook and eventually swallowed Fustat, leaving the earlier capital as a source of building material and fertiliser, before it finally became Cairos main rubbish dump the citys remains gradually becoming lost under centuries of garbage.
Fustat Today
In recent years the surrounding area has seen some development, thanks to the draw of the monuments of nearby Coptic Cairo, which is visited by large numbers of tourists each day. The remains of Fustat, however, lie forgotten in plain sight. The main problem is a lack of promotion; I stumbled across the massive archaeological site by accident when visiting the Islamic Pottery Centre at the end of it entrance road. Knowing that ancient Fustat had been in this area, and seeing the large archaeological site in the distance, I came closer, but expected to be hurried away by over protective guards (or asked for baksheesh-tips in order to enter). Instead I was welcomed in and asked to buy an entrance ticket (10 LE).
The Archaeological Remains
At first glance the remains of Fustat are more like an abandoned opencast mine than a medieval capital city an impression created at its edges where the grey sloping ground enters the great depression of the excavated area. Palm trees, weeds, cacti, and tall grass are evenly dispersed across the site, and the remains of small fired clay and mud-brick buildings are scattered around. The bricks are held together with thick mortar made from recycled limestone probably re-used from ancient pharaonic buildings. One house still has its window – three thick slats sitting on top of its mud-brick wall. Columns, lying toppled on their sides, speak of better times; some are made from Aswan red granite, and probably started their lives as elements of pharaonic period temples from the Memphite area, before being adapted for Roman temples and then Christian churches until finally being reworked in medieval times. Intricate columns capitals also lie about on the surface.
A large amount of pottery is scattered across the site, as well as being piled high close to the guards house. Some are decorated with images of birds, while green glazed pieces can also be seen. There are even clay pipes among the ruins. The next most striking feature at Fustat and probably the most dangerous if you arent watching where youre going is the sheer number of wells dotted around the site (almost all without any indication to their presence until youre standing above the hole). Apparently, nearly every house in the city had a well or cistern system, and the houses themselves are described as being multiple stories high, like a medieval New York city.
This is difficult to envision today when faced with the ruinous moonscape before you. There are no information signs (theres no one to read them anyway), which, despite leaving you a little confused, does lead to a sense of discovery whenever you come across something different. In one part of the site, after having become accustomed to fallen columns and mud-bricks, I came across a series of red granite mill-stones, all left together, and later an oil-press.
Solitude in the City
Cairo is not a quiet city. Even in my apartment I can still hear the incessant honking of the cars below. Its not a place your Aunt Margaret and Uncle Steve would go for a quiet weekend break to sit by the river and watch the boats go by; not unless they normally have voices in their heads incessantly screaming TAXI, FELUCCA (boat rides), or Welcome in Egypt, and enjoy hordes of people knocking them about on an uneven sidewalk. No. Cairo is famous for being a city with a pulse, where ancient meets modern, and everything is chaotic. This is its charm. Its hard to believe that Fustat was once the same a medieval metropolis of bustling streets, screaming vendors, rich and poor all living in close quarters. Today this space is an escape from all of that, a quiet bubble where it is possible to reflect on how the world has changed, and how it has stayed the same. Still, at the very limits of the site new apartments buildings rise up, a constant reminder that the modern world, with all its noise, isnt far away.
If youve ever wanted to own a perfect hand-crafted piece of traditional Egyptian pottery made by a man with only one thumb and one eye I can tell you exactly where to go. His name is Salah and he lives in 
After the pleasantries Salah springs into action, grabbing a lump of clay with his rough hands from beneath a sheet of plastic, and carrying it over to his roughly constructed table, sunk slightly into the ground and held together by old nails and thin pieces of rope. He throws the clay on to a spinning wheel, cut into the centre of the table. Below, his feet rhythmically control the spinning of the wheel, surrounded by the curling remains of discarded clay that litter the floor. Seconds later a perfect pot sat upon the wheel, formed by the use of a scraper positioned on Salahs first finger. At this moment I realise that he only has one thumb, and one eye to match, making the quality and speed of his work even more impressive. Give me a lump of clay, a wheel, and a few hours, and Ill produce for you something resembling the elephant mans face Salah made five further pots in less than five minutes.
Although there is copious evidence for the Egyptian kings statues, huge depictions on temple walls, stelae the actual reality of the day-to-day work and personal authority of these individuals is often ignored in favour of discussions of divinity, art and ideology. There is good reason for this. Despite the extensive amount of evidence available to scholars, everything is shrouded in a thick layer of ideological presentation that masks the reality of the situation. This makes it difficult to separate fact from fiction: what are we to envision the king did every day?
Driving through the desert in search of whales sounds counterproductive, but I had been assured that if I hired a jeep and drove seventy kilometres from Egypts Faiyum Oasis out into the Sahara this is indeed what I would find. If this was a ruse it was a clever one, and UNESCO were in on it.
Despite the reassurances, my initial nervousness of travelling in this part of Egypt was well founded in experience. The first time Id visited the Faiyum my trip had been violently brought to an abrupt standstill by an exploding tyre. I spent the second journey huddled up at the back of my taxi, trying to keep myself warm after the windscreen had been shattered by some unseen high velocity projectile. In order to keep moving the driver had punched a hole in the shattered glass just big enough to see out. Naturally, this odd situation received no attention from the police. I had decided then and there that my travels in the Faiyum were cursed. Heading out into the middle of the desert in an old soviet Land Croser could thus, very reasonably, spell doom. Just as my mind had drawn romantic visions of desert travel and ancient remains, my mind also drew images of a burnt out soviet wreck far from the road, half buried in a dune, the pathetic charred remains of a leopard barely visible on the blackened, baked side of the vehicle, Mohammed wandering in circles dazed and confused in the darkness, while I stand alone wondering how long it would be polite to wait before I could kill and eat Mohammed and his apprentice, cooked over the burning remains of our 4×4, in a desperate bid for survival.
After crossing a large expanse of clean white desert, rippled like ocean waves frozen in time, a simple entranceway slowly emerged from the dusty horizon. Red and divided in two by the desert track, it marked the entrance to the site. We continued along the road for a short time, passing large rocky hills on the right, while, unexpectedly, a large visitors centre grew closer and closer in front of me. A visitors centre? The moustachioed hat-wearing Nineteenth Century adventurer within choked and spluttered on his Earl Grey. A visitors centre! This didnt fit my courageous, lost-in-the-desert-perhaps-having-to-eat-my-own-driver fantasies. Instantly, upon arrival, I exited the Land Croser and surveyed my surroundings; the first striking feature was that there was a multitude of buildings, all constructed to aesthetically fit the landscape – domed mud-huts with irregularly shaped windows, made entirely from local natural materials. They were reminiscent of ancient desert dwellings or Luke Skywalkers house on Tatooine. There was a gift shop and snacks available in the picnicking and sheesha area, camel hire, toilets and a police hut. Information panels described the site, and maps were free, all bearing the acronym UNESCO. Damn you UNESCO, I seethed, such comfort and safety shouldnt exist in the dangerous expanse of the desert, they should have more respect for my preconceived ideas. I was in the middle of nowhere, the toilet should be a hole behind a rocky outcrop, my drinks should be the ones I foolishly forgot to buy before leaving the Faiyum, I should be in danger of being eaten by a desert fox at least once. I had travelled from a natural oasis to a man-made one.
The path to the whales was clearly marked out by rows of red rocks. I followed them to the first exhibit which displayed the fossilised lower jaw bone, ribs and vertebrae of an ancient whale known as Basilosaurus Isis, a type of whale that still had functional hind limbs from an earlier phase as a land-based mammal. It was marked by a circle of small red stones, followed by an inner circle of rope held by stumpy posts. The fossils lay on the surface; while being impressive due to their antiquity, they were at the same time unimposing, as if they had been sitting there sunbathing within their little circle and Id disturbed them. Further remains followed: another type of whale called a Dorudon atrox, a short-toothed sawfish, the curious fossilised burrows of wood digesting Teredo, a marine turtle, and the fossilised mangrove roots that once formed a shallow coastline, and in which the various carcases of these animals had once become entangled. Between the fossil displays were small domed huts containing information panels describing every aspect of the areas history, and giving particular details about life here in ancient times. All around, as I walked from exhibit to exhibit, unusual rock formations dotted the landscape; pillars of stone standing in the desert. Over millions of years the weaker stone had been eaten away by the wind, leaving the harder stone standing. The life history of each column was strikingly visible in the stratigraphy, worn by the rock like a striped jersey.