A look at Fatimid Cairo's restored main street

Stretching 1.5km from Bab Al-Fotouh (Conquest Gate) to Bab Zuweila, Al-Muizulidinillah Street, better known as Share' Al-Muiz -- adjacent to Sayidna Al-Hussein -- has remained popular since its heyday as Cairo's principal thoroughfare under the Fatimids. For a long time people who flock to Share' Al-Muiz to buy the shabka (wedding ornaments) from the gold market known as the Sagha, to join in folk or religious festivities or to enjoy an Oriental dinner or Ramadan Sohour, however, have had to contend with construction works which obscured the area's beautiful Islamic architecture and robbed the street of its spirit. The happy news is they finally have Share' Al-Muiz back. Neither subterranean drainage pumps nor cranes are anywhere to be seen; and the façades have resumed their original splendour. The monuments date not only from the time of the Fatimids but the Mamelukes, Ayoubids and Ottomans, many of whose rulers commissioned some of the Islamic world's most beautiful examples of the sabil, the kuttab and the wikala here. Extant are no less than 34 registered buildings displaying remarkable woodwork, mosaics and domes: the Sultan Qalawun complex; the school of Ibn Barquq Beit Al-Qadi, the Sultan Al-Saleh Najmuddin dome, the sabil- kuttab of Khesru Pasha and the Mohamed Ali Pasha Sabil. By the 1990s time, pollution and the locals' lack of awareness had undermined these monuments' condition, down to their foundations, and the 1992 earthquake left visible marks on many of them. In 2000, when the government launched the huge Historic Cairo Rehabilitation Project (HCRP) -- aiming to protect and conserve historic Cairo with view to developing extensive areas into an open-air museum -- Share' Al-Muiz had its share of the LE850- million budget.