City of the Dead (Northern and Southern Cemeteries)
Cairo's vast medieval necropolis, where families live among sultans' tombs — a living, threatened heritage landscape.
A necropolis the size of a city
The City of the Dead — al-Qarafa — is the name given to the great cemeteries that stretch for several kilometres along the eastern edge of historic Cairo, below the Muqattam hills. The Southern Cemetery, south of the Citadel, grew from the burial grounds of Fustat after the Arab conquest and holds the shrines of revered figures such as Imam al-Shafi'i. The Northern Cemetery, east of the medieval city, was developed from the late fourteenth century by the Circassian Mamluk sultans, who built vast funerary complexes there — the Khanqah of Faraj ibn Barquq, the complexes of Barsbay, Inal and Qaytbay — around which grew residences, markets and services.
Living among the tombs
Many tombs in the cemeteries were built not as single graves but as walled family enclosures, the hosh, with rooms for relatives who came to visit the dead on feast days and stayed overnight. Over the centuries caretakers, workers and their families settled in these enclosures, and by the twentieth century the City of the Dead had become a lived-in district, home to tens of thousands of Cairenes, with streets, schools, workshops and shops among the mausoleums. This coexistence of the living and the dead, inside a landscape of medieval architecture, is unique among the world's great cities. The cemeteries are part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Historic Cairo.
A changing landscape
Since 2020, large parts of the historic cemeteries — especially the Southern Cemetery and the area around Imam al-Shafi'i — have been cleared to build roads and flyovers, destroying thousands of graves, some of them of historical and architectural importance; some notable tombs have been relocated to a new cemetery. The major registered monuments, including the complexes of Qaytbay and Faraj ibn Barquq and the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i, still stand, but the setting has changed dramatically, and conditions can change from month to month.
Exhibo editorial
Nothing in Cairo is as disorienting or as moving as walking through the Qarafa: domes and minarets on every side, carved tombstones behind iron doors, and in between, ordinary life — a woman hanging laundry on a mausoleum wall, a mechanic's shop, kids racing bicycles down lanes named after Mamluk emirs. The dead and the living have shared this ground for centuries without much fuss.
That coexistence is now under real threat, and anyone who visits should know it. Go with a local guide who knows the current routes and the families, walk respectfully, ask before photographing people, and look hard: some of what you see may not be here next year. That is the strongest reason to come.
How to find it
The Northern Cemetery lies east of Al-Azhar Park across Salah Salem Road; the Funerary Complex of Qaytbay and the Khanqah of Faraj ibn Barquq are its best-known landmarks. The Southern Cemetery stretches south of the Citadel around the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i. Taxis can drop you at either monument; from there, explore on foot with a guide.
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