Bab Zuwayla
Fatimid Cairo's last southern gate, crowned by two Mamluk minarets you can climb for a rooftop view of the old city.
The southern gate of Fatimid Cairo
Bab Zuwayla is the last surviving southern gate of the walled Fatimid city of al-Qahira. It was built in 1092 by Badr al-Jamali, the Armenian-born commander and vizier of the caliph al-Mustansir, who rebuilt Cairo's fortifications in stone after a period of crisis; together with the northern gates of Bab al-Futuh and Bab al-Nasr, it is among the finest surviving examples of eleventh-century military architecture in the Islamic world. The gate is named after the Zuwayla, a Berber tribe from North Africa whose soldiers formed part of the Fatimid army and were quartered nearby. It consists of a deep vaulted passage flanked by two massive rounded towers, with a platform above from which the gate could be defended.
A stage for the city
For centuries Bab Zuwayla marked the southern end of the city's main street, the Qasaba — today's al-Muizz Street. Caravans set out from it, festivals and processions passed through it, and it was the site of public executions: in 1517 the Ottoman conquerors hanged Tumanbay II, the last Mamluk sultan, from its gate. Popular tradition associated it with the saint Mutawalli, whose presence was believed to inhabit the gate, and passers-by left nails, hair and pieces of cloth on its doors as votive offerings.
The minarets of al-Mu'ayyad
In 1415–1420 Sultan al-Mu'ayyad Shaykh built his great mosque against the inner side of the gate — on the site of the prison in which he had once been held, and where he had vowed to build a mosque if he survived. Uniquely, its two minarets were built on top of the Fatimid towers of Bab Zuwayla, giving the gate the silhouette it has today. Restored by the American Research Center in Egypt with Egyptian partners at the turn of the twenty-first century, the gate's interior, roof and minarets are open to visitors, who can climb up through the towers onto the minarets' balconies.
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From the street, Bab Zuwayla is a frown of stone: two blind towers, a dark mouth, the noise of the Tentmakers' market spilling through it. Then you climb. The stair goes up inside the Fatimid masonry, comes out on the roof, and continues up the Mamluk minaret until the whole old city is under you — domes, laundry, satellite dishes, the minarets of a dozen mosques at eye level.
It's the best cheap view in Cairo and one of the strangest buildings in it: a Fatimid gate wearing a Mamluk mosque's minarets like a crown it was never meant to have. Go late afternoon, when the muezzins start up around you and the light turns the stone the colour of honey.
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How to find it
Bab Zuwayla stands at the southern end of al-Muizz Street, where it meets the covered Street of the Tentmakers (al-Khayamiya); walk south from Al-Azhar Street past the al-Ghuri complex and you reach it in about five minutes. The ticket office is at the foot of the gate on the inner side, next to the Mosque of al-Mu'ayyad. Stairs inside the towers lead to the roof and then up to the minaret balconies.
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