People have lived in the area around Cairo for thousands of years. The history of Cairo begins with a garrison town named Fustat that was built on the east bank of the Nile by the Muslim army of about 10, 000 soldiers that invaded Egypt in 641.
Fustat served as the frost capital of Egypt during the Umayyad Caliphate (661-750), based in Damascus and the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), based in Baghdad.
In AD 969 Egypt’s ruler at the time established a new city. It was later named Cairo. Fustat is part of Old Cairo.
On the 1200s Cairo became the capital of a large Muslim empire. The city thrived as a center of trade and Islamic learning and culture.
By about 1340, not only had Cairo’s population swelled to half a million inhabitants (making it the largest city on three continents), but as the home of al-Azhar University, it had also become the main seat of learning in the Islamic world. After other rulers rook over in the 1500s, the city went into a period of decline.
The city remained relatively unimportant for several centuries; by the time Napoleon’s army invaded Egypt in 1798, Cairo’s population had declined to fewer than 300, 000.
In 1922 Egypt became an independent country with Cairo as its capital. Since then the city has grown and grown.
Cairo – the largest city in Africa
