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Egypt Major Cities
Although Egypt's urban history is lengthy, modern
urbanization, characterized by massive and continuing rural-to-
urban migration, is largely a post-World War II phenomenon. Since
1947, urban growth rates have averaged about one percentage point
higher than the rates for rural areas. Thus, for forty years, the
urban population has been expanding at the rate of 4 percent
annually. Cairo, the country's capital and largest city, has been
affected the most by this urbanization. Between 1947 and 1986,
the city's population grew from 1.5 million to more than 6
million (within the city's corporate limits). During the same
period, the population of Giza (Al Jizah), across the Nile from
Cairo, grew even more dramatically, from 18,000 to 1.6 million.
In 1989 an estimated 10.5 million people, or 20 percent of all
Egyptians, lived in the urban agglomeration known as Greater
Cairo, which extended along both banks of the Nile from Shubra al
Khaymah in the north to Hulwan in the south. Within the city's
boundaries, the population density averaged 26,000 people per
square kilometer. In some of the more crowded quarters of the
city, such as Rawd al Faraj, densities were as high as 135,000
per square kilometer.
Cairo is an ancient city, occupying a site that has been
continuously inhabited for more than 3,500 years. Over the
centuries, there have been nine distinct cities where Cairo is
located. The "modern" city was founded in 969 near the site of
ancient Egypt's Khere-ohe, better known in the West by its Greek
name of Heliopolis. In Arabic, "Cairo" means "victorious" and is
the same name used for the planet Mars. Cairo has consistently
been a city of preeminence in the Arab world for more than 1,000
years, but its political and economic influence within and beyond
Egypt has varied. One of its more illustrious periods ran from
1170 to 1345, when Cairo became one of the world's largest cities
with a population of about 500,000. The layout of central Cairo
remains similar to what it was during that time. Many of the
city's renowned mosques--there are more than 600 Islamic
monuments in Cairo--also date back to the medieval period.
Cairo's importance derived from its role as a center for the
production and export of textiles and refined sugar and for goods
manufactured from cotton, flax, and sugarcane. Cairo was also a
transshipment center for overland trade from India and Africa to
Europe.
The plague known as the Black Death devastated Cairo and the
rest of Egypt between 1347 and 1350. The plague killed about 40
percent of the country's population.
Cairo quickly lost its preeminent role as a transshipment
center when the Europeans discovered a maritime route to India
and China around the Cape of Good Hope. Cairo remained Egypt's
administrative and commercial center, but it experienced relative
economic stagnation for the next three centuries. By the time
Napoleon conquered the city in 1798, its population had declined
to approximately 200,000.
During the nineteenth century, the rise of the cotton export
trade, government sponsorship of industrial development, and the
completion of the construction of the Suez Canal in 1869
revitalized Cairo, and the city began to grow again. During the
last half of the nineteenth century, the French approach to urban
planning changed Cairo's layout. Egypt's ruler, Ismail (1863-79),
had been educated in France and aspired to have his capital rival
Paris. To coincide with the ceremonies for the opening of the
Suez Canal, Ismail proposed a design for "modern" Cairo. The
proposal included a wooden replica of La Scala opera house in
Milan. The structure was to host the premier of Giuseppe Verdi's
opera Aida. Ismail's efforts to build a modern Cairo
resulted in a separation--still apparent today--between the
western part of the city, called Al Izbakiya Gardens (which is
European) and the eastern part (which is Arabic).
Cairo has continued to grow rapidly since 1850, when its
population was approximately 250,000. By 1930 the population had
reached 1 million. Throughout the twentieth century, it has been
the most populous city in Africa and the Arab world. Cairo's
development has been most intense since World War II, and has
resulted in a variety of problems. The city's population, growing
about 300,000 per year in the 1980s, has strained urban services
to the breaking point. Public transportation was woefully
inadequate in the late 1980s, with about one of every four buses
out of commission at any given time. Public water supplies, sewer
facilities, and trash collection were all overburdened
(see Urban Society
, this ch.). Housing was perhaps the most pressing problem
because persistent shortages of skilled labor and construction
materials hampered efforts to build residential units quickly
enough to meet demand. The demand for moderately priced housing
was especially high. Some people resorted to clandestine and
semilegal housing arrangements; as many as 200,000 wooden,
cardboard, and metal huts were constructed on the roofs of
apartment buildings. An estimated 500,000 people were living in
the mausoleums in the city's cemeteries.
Alexandria is Egypt's second largest city. Located on the
coastline of the Mediterranean Sea, it has been an important port
ever since it was founded by Alexander the Great more than 2,300
years ago. The city declined dramatically during the sixteenth to
eighteenth centuries when its maritime trade with Europe
virtually ceased as a result of new sea routes around Africa to
India. When the French landed at Alexandria in 1798, barely
10,000 people lived in the city. Alexandria grew substantially in
the nineteenth century because of industrialization and Egypt's
emergence as an exporter of agricultural commodities to Europe.
Between 1821 and 1846, Alexandria's population grew from 12,500
to 164,000. By the end of the century, its population had almost
doubled to 320,000. Between 1947 and 1986, Alexandria's
population grew from 700,000 to 2.7 million.
In 1990 Alexandria was a major industrial center that
included two large oil refineries; chemical, cement, and metal
plants; textile mills; and food processing operations. Alexandria
is also the country's most important harbor for exports and
imports.
Egypt's third and fourth largest cities, Giza and Shubra al
Khaymah, are part of Greater Cairo. The rapid growth of these
cities since 1947 is directly related to the growth of Cairo.
Giza (1986 population 1.6 million), opposite the Nile River
island of Ar Rawdah, is the location of Cairo University and the
famed Pyramids of Giza. Shubra al Khaymah (1986 population
500,000), on the Nile north of Cairo's Bulaq quarter, is a
manufacturing suburb with a heavy concentration of textile
factories.
As of 1989, Egypt had nine other cities with populations
greater than 200,000. In the Delta were Al Mahallah al Kubra with
a population of 375,000, Tanta with 365,000, Al Mansurah with
335,000, Az Zaqaziq with 260,000, and Damanhur with 215,000.
These five cities were local administrative, commercial, and
manufacturing centers. At the northern and southern termini of
the Suez Canal were Port Said with a population of 358,000 and
Suez with 271,000. In Upper Egypt were Asyut on the Nile with a
population of 250,000 and Al Fayyum, an oasis with a population
of 215,000. Five other cities had populations ranging between
150,00 and 200,000. These included Al Minya, Aswan, and Bani
Suwayf in Upper Egypt; Kafr ad Dawwar in the Delta; and Ismailia
(Al Ismailiyah) on the Suez Canal.
Data as of December 1990
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