Outside Cairo is the City of the Dead, a vast, sprawling necropolis ornamented with thousands of exquisite funerary structures dedicated to Sultans, scholars, and venerable forbears of the Egyptian nation. Now a construction project dooms part of it to destruction. Please sign.
And though its domed mausolea are exquisite, the City of the Dead is very much alive. Since the medieval era, its villa-like structures have been inhabited by generations of Cairene residents. Today, over half a million people live in the cemetery. huffpost.com/entry/city-of-…
If this thread has made you curious about the Qarafa, its history, and its people, read Gaila El Kadi's wonderful Architecture for the Dead from @AUCPress
aucpress.com/product/archit…
aucpress.com/product/archit…
And my first-ever published article was on the Mausoleum of Imam al-Shafi'i, one of the founders of the four Sunni legal schools, his tomb a beloved saintly site of visitation located in the Qarafa al-Sughra cemetery south of Cairo. s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/media.archnet.… 
Many residents of the Qarafa have survived by providing goods and services to those who pay weekly visits to family tombs and saintly figures and by working as gravediggers. They are finding their lives disrupted and endangered by the outbreak of COVID-19. reuters.com/article/us-hea…
This lovely documentary by Sérgio Tréfaut brings the Qarafa's people and its history to life:
The @EUinEgypt-funded @ArchinosArch project 'Heritage for the Living in the "City of the Dead"' rehabilitates disused sections of one of Cairo’s most important historic architectural complexes and adapts them to serve the needs of the local community.
