Cairo
Cairo names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Cairo the capital city of Egypt
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
the capital city of Egypt. It is situated on the east or right bank of the Nile, a few miles above the apex of the Great Delta. Cairo is an Arabian city. The name is Arabian, meaning victory or the conqueror. The exact site of the city is determined by a range of hills, approaching from the direction of the Red Sea. The spur nearest the river is a position of natural military strength. In 640 an Arabic commander, a lieutenant of Caliph Omar, established a town between this spur and the river. This he called the Tent. It is now known as Old Cairo. In 970 a new city was founded a little farther to the north. It was surrounded with a stone wall and a citadel was built. Later the citadel was greatly strengthened, and a well, known as Joseph's Well, was sunk in the solid rock to the level of the Nile. The present city consists, therefore, of Old Cairo, the New Town, and suburbs. A boulevard runs northwest from the citadel to the heart of the European quarters. This is the chief business street of Cairo. The European quarters contain the consulates, hotels, a fine opera house, theaters, English and German churches, and offices. Old Cairo is strictly oriental. The streets are narrow; many of them are filthy, and are lined with mud hovels. The northwest portion of the city lying on the river, rather below the rest of Cairo, forms the port of the city. A railway and wagon bridge crosses the river here. Across the river from Old Cairo lies the suburb, Gizeh. The government buildings are here. There is also a fine zoological garden and museum of Egyptian antiquities. The pyramids of Gizeh lie in plain sight to the southwest. They may be reached by a tramway. The Nilometer, a building sheltering a graduated post, used officially to note the height of the Nile, stands on a little island in the Nile. The Mohammedan mosque is the prominent architectural feature of Cairo. There are over 500 in various states of repair. The finest mosque of all is that of Sultan Hassan. It dates from 1357. It is celebrated for the "grandeur of its porch and cornice and the delicate honey-comb tracery which adorns them." It is surmounted by a lofty minaret. From an educational point of view, Cairo is the center of the Moslem world. The chief theological school of the Moslem world is attached to the Azhar Mosque. In 1906 there were 317 professors and 9,758 Moslem students. The Moslem burying ground, just without the city, is adorned with numerous mosques. Cairo is the seat of a patriarch of the Coptic Church and of a patriarch of the Greek Church as well. It is interesting to know that the Copts use a calendar differing by 284 years from the calendar we use. Cairo is connected with Alexandria, near one of the mouths of the Nile, by a railway 150 miles in length. There is railway communication also with Suez and with upper Egypt. A fresh-water canal leaves the Nile at this point and cuts across country to Suez. Cairo does a large business in gold and silver ornaments, in rugs, carpets, saddles, swords, daggers, boots and shoes , and clothing. The city is headquarters for a large trade with the natives of the upper Nile, and the Bedouin people of the Sudan. Large parties are organized at Cairo to visit Mecca. The population of Cairo and its suburbs in 1907 was 654,476. It is the largest city, not only in Egypt, but in all Africa. See Nile ; Nilometer; Alexandria ; Pyramids
Cairo EGYPT library containing a splendid collection of illuminated copies
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
EGYPT library containing a splendid collection of illuminated copies of the Koran; a magnetic observatory, and the Mohammedan college of El Ahzar (originally a mosque), the principal university of the Mohammedan world, attended by 8,000 to 10,000 students from all parts of the East. The suburb of Masr-el-Atîqa, or Old Cairo (first called Fostat, "tenttown"), was the site of the original Cairo, founded about 642 by the Sultan Amru, the town on the present site, a little to the N. of Old Cairo, not having been founded till about 970; its citadel was built by Saladin in 1176, and it was the capital of the sultans of Egypt till the time of the Turkish conquest in 1517; since that time it has been the residence of the pashas, governors of the province. It was taken by the French in 1798, and held by them for more than three years. Pop. about 800,000.
Cairo a city port of entry
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a city port of entry, and county-seat of Alexander county, Ill.; at the confluence of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and on the Illinois Central, the Mobile and Ohio, the St. Louis, Iron 4 1114 Mountain and Southern, the Cleveland, Cincinnati, Chicago and St. Louis and the St. Louis Southwestern railroads; 150 miles S. E. of St. Louis. It is the trade center of southern Illinois, and has freight and passenger steamer communications with all river ports, important manufactures, daily and weekly newspapers, national banks, etc. Pop. (1910) 14,548; (1920) 15,203.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's counted 654,476 people in Cairo and its suburbs in 1907, it was already "the largest city, not only in Egypt, but in all Africa"; greater Cairo now holds well over 20 million, and since 2015 Egypt has been building an entirely new administrative capital in the desert to the east to take the government out of it. The Nilometer that Aiton's describes as officially recording the river's height became a curiosity after the Aswan High Dam, completed in 1970, ended the annual Nile flood. Al-Azhar, credited by both accounts as the principal university of the Muslim world with 8,000 to 10,000 students, was reorganised as a modern state university in 1961 with faculties of medicine and engineering alongside theology, and the Grand Egyptian Museum opened beside the Giza pyramids in 2025. The other Cairo, in Illinois, has gone the opposite way: from 15,203 residents in 1920 to under 2,000 today, its railroads and river trade gone.
Written for this edition, 2026.