Tomb of Mohammed Ali – The Citadel

While its true the Egyptian Museum was first on our list to visit today, we were unable to take cameras into the building as it is forbidden to do so. We toured the museum in..an hour and a half..? We pressed on quickly as the kids became tired. Owen was enthusiastic, Finn tired quickly and Grandma tired fastest of all. We knew we had plans for two more stops today and pressed on to The Citadel. This structure overlooks the city of Cairo from a hill with the City of the Dead between (wherein people live in mausoleums and scratch a living somehow or other). One or two of the views below may feel familiar, as The Citadel is one of the more photographed locations in the city.

We learned today that Mohammed Ali was, in fact, an Albanian and loved Egypt – bringing money, passion for learning and building, and an intention to build a strong army. With the latter he sent muslims to what is now Bosnia (the muslims that were unwanted during the Serbian ethic cleansing in the 1990s), and captured what was then Yugoslavia. This desire for external expropriation through war leaves many Egyptians with a bad taste in their mouths, Egypt never having wanted to be a conquering nation. And so while Mohammed Ali is venerated, indeed the mosque and buildings in the images below were built by and for him, his legacy is eschewed by some of the Egyptian literati.

I have had trouble interspersing comments with the photos when posting, for some reason (I believe it has to do with the WordPress theme I am using), and so I’ll just post the photos one after the other below here. Tomorrow we visit Mosques and Churches and Wednesday we head to the Khan al Khalili Market (Souk).