Evert Schreur
‘The Musafirkhana was beautiful. It gave you a feeling for work. You were surrounded by nice woodwork, calligraphy and coloured glass windows. You were in the centre of Cairo, but you didn’t hear any noise’. Painter Mohammed Abla is soft-spoken yet very angry. Standing in the courtyard of the burned Musafirkhana palace in the heart of Islamic Cairo, Abla sighs and moans. For 21 years he had his studio in this late 18th-century Ottoman palace. In the ‘60s, the then Minister of Culture, Sarwat Okasha, had decided in a fit of wisdom to provide studios for artists in the Musafirkhana.
Last October the building burned down and Abla lost 90 percent of his work. With real estate speculation thriving in the neighbourhood, Abla thinks it was arson. ‘The government people say the fire started by a burning rubbish pile in the alley outside. They promised an investigation. I do not believe them. For them the Musafirkhana was just number 20 out of many other numbers. They don’t care. Corruption has no feeling’.
Whether arson or negligence, the loss of the Musafirkhana is a case in point in the steady decline of the old Fatimid city of Cairo. On a list of 622 monuments drawn up in 1950, the Musafirkhana was registered as number 20. At the time the list included some 130 buildings that did not exist anymore. They were listed deliberately to meet the UNESCO criterion of 600 historic buildings to secure for the city of Cairo the status of ‘world heritage’. Since 1950 another 20 to 30 buildings on the list have been demolished. During the Nasser era, preservation of Islamic architecture was a non-issue. In those days the Egyptian Antiquities Organization had an annual budget of LE600. In the Gamaliyyah district of Islamic Cairo several monuments were demolished to make room for schools. In the ‘70s and ‘80s, the notion of preservation finally dawned upon the authorities. However, most attention was given to Egypt’s pharaonic past. It was only after the 1992 earthquake – which caused only minor damage – that the government felt challenged by the Islamists, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, to start paying attention to the country’s Islamic architectural heritage. The most manifest initiatives, however, were taken by Ismailis from abroad who felt strongly attracted to the old capital of the their medieval Fatimid caliphate. Apart from the Agha Khan Foundation, a group of Bohras from Pakistan and India raised capital to refurnish the Al-Hakim Mosque – named after the disputed Fatimid caliph – in an Indian sub-continental style, with outlandish white stone battlements. By 1998, the Antiquities Organization, meanwhile renamed the Supreme Council for Antiquities – had its budget for Fatimid Cairo raised to LE247 million.
Still very little has been done to save the city from total collapse. The problems are numerous. Especially in Egypt there is no public debate yet on what restoration should be.
Critique and self-critique are taboo. All experts involved in the politically sensitive preservation business, Egyptian and foreigners alike, are only willing to talk on condition of anonymity.
