1899.l.15(13)

Genre: Urban Topographical Photography

View looking over the rooftops of the city towards the Nile in the distance, with a large, flat-roofed group of houses in the foreground, with ventilation shafts to direct air into the interiors: 'This photograph is taken from the summit of the Citadel, a portion of the saluting battery of which is seen on the left. It embraces the whole of the city and suburbs south of the mosque of Tooloon, which is just out of the view, and shows the sites of three successive capitals of Mohammadan Egypt. The first of these, on the eastern shore of the Nile, was El-Fustat, now called Masr el-'Ateekah, or inaccurately by Europeans, Old Cairo. It occupies the centre of the distant view, commencing on the extreme left, and extending as far as a line drawn to the Pyramids of El-Geezeh, which stand out grandly on the edge of the western desert. Thence gardens, palaces, and houses extend to modern Cairo...This view includes an open space (nearly at the foot of the Citadel, beyond the ugly Turkish arsenal), called 'Taht es-Soor,' very similar to the Rumeyleh seen in a former view [print 11]; and under the angle of the Citadel, a portion of a wide race-course, the Kara Meydan, formerly used for races and sports, but now almost deserted, being peopled only by shopkeepers, and the owners of small booths. From the Citadel to the Nile, amid cemeteries and mounds of rubbish, extends the long line of the aqueduct, that conveys water from the Nile to the Citadel. It is of solid, massive masonry, and was built by the Sultan El-Ghooree, in the place of one constructed of wood.'