Egypt - Ayyoubide Wall

The scientific program of IFAO-MAE on the « Walls of Cairo », is led since 2000 with the Supreme Council of Antiquities - SCA and the Aga Khan Foundation - AKTC. Stéphan Pradines and his team accomplished excavations on the Ayyubids doors of Bab al-Mahruq and Bab al-Barqiyya in 2000, where the AKTC (Aga Khan trust for Culture) is in charge of the restoration and preservation of the defensive wall. Then the team of the Ifao led some excavations on the site of the « Archeological Triangle / Urban Plaza Parking» from 2001 till 2006, site managed by Saïd Ismael, Manager of south Islamic Cairo. From 2004 till 2005, the team of Ifao accomplished some excavations on the Fatimid door of Bab al-Tawfiq, site managed by Ragai Hussein, Director of north Islamic Cairo. Our project has an historical component too, we are in collaboration with many historians from different Universities (Cairo University, Provence University and Leiden University). Our goal is to propose a new history of the walls of Cairo from the Fatimid period to the Ottoman Period with different Arabic sources.

The major discovery of the excavation of the Urban Plaza Parking was the discovery of 3 levels of Fatimid occupation that contained the ceramics in stratigraphic context and architectural elements attributable to the Xth and XIth centuries. The Fatimids structures consists of an house with a lime floor, delimited by walls and a mix of fire bricks and mud bricks. The north part of the building opens up on a court with a fountain in excellent state of conservation. The channel of water evacuation forms an elbow northwards then leaves westward, it delimits a roadbed of compact clay that constituted the plant earth of a small garden. These levels of Fatimid occupation, composed of a fountain and a garden, are very similar of those found on the site of Fustât, building with funerary vocation dated between 980 and 1020 ad. Discovered by Georges Scanlon (AUC) and Roland-Pierre Gayraud (CNRS-IFAO), the mausoleums of Fustât were ornamented of gardens and fountains.

Other discovery in the same zone, to some meters of Saladin’s defensive wall, we exhumed a building composed of big mud bricks. This strong tower of 10m side and 4m of high, sort of quadrangular bastion, have been erected on the Fatimid house of the end of the Xth century. However this bastion is previous to the construction of the Ayyubid defensive wall of 1171-1177, it is about the second Fatimid town wall, the one of Badr al-Gamali. It has been confirmed by our excavations on the door of Bab al-Tawfiq, on the other side of al-Azhar street. Bab al-Tawfiq is a door of the surrounding wall of Badr al-Gamali. The door is dated by an inscription of 1087-1090 ad. The door was constructed at the same time as Bab al-Futuh, Bab al-Nasr and Bab Zuweila. The door has been erected under the Fatimid Caliph’s reign of Mustansir (1036-1094), works have been directed by its Vizir Badr al-Gamali (1073-1094). The door was connected to a wall of big square mud bricks. This wall made of mud bricks goes until the south of the al-Azhar street, and it’s this wall that we found in 2001 in our excavations of the Urban Plaza parking.