Posted at Nov 26/2007 08:53AM:
Elisa Foster: The Ayyubid wall was built in 1176 by the sunni Ayyubid dynasty under Saladin after the burning of Fustat by Alaric and his crusader troops and the subsequent crumbling of the Fatimid dynasty. The Ayyubid wall is significant because it enclosed both Fustat and Cairo into a single area, thus symbolizing the coming together of these two cities that had once been geographically close but ideologically removed from one another (Fustat, the old garrison town inhabited by the poor; Cairo, the royal city of the Fatimids). It was also intended to provide protection and fortification for these cities against Crusader invasion.
Posted at Dec 10/2007 08:28AM:
ian: As well it was linked to the building of the citadell of Cairo a key new feature in the urban planning of this period. In this way it represents a new political reality of the changing global relations of the Islamic world that developed in the wake of the Crusades, the emergence of the Turkic peoples as part of the demographic scene, as well as the expansion of global networs that we will see highlighted in the 13th century. In this way it operates as a physical marker of these kinds of consolidations and transfromations as expressed in the urban fabric.
