Scholars
Cairo
Cairo is the city of a thousand minarets: the Fatimids founded it in 969 north of Fustat as their caliphate''s base, and Saladin made it the heart of resistance to the Crusaders. It peaked in the Mamluk era: al-Azhar since 970 the world''s oldest continuous university, Saladin''s citadel on the Muqattam hill, the Khan al-Khalili markets and Muhammad Ali''s nineteenth-century works. Cairo wove Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman into one fabric, and it remains the Islamic world''s largest city to this day. Cairo is still a city read in layers: Fatimid in al-Azhar, Saladin's in the Citadel, Mamluk in the minarets, Ottoman in the quarters, modern along the same Nile that passed the pharaohs. Out of Cairo came the Arab world's first book printing, and it became modern Arab culture's capital with its writers and artists.