www.bahraintribune.com A giant park built on 500-year-old hill of garbage in one of Cairo’s most congested and polluted quarters was inaugurated this week by its billionaire founder and main funder, the Aga Khan.
At a lavish ceremony attended by Egypt’s first lady, Suzanne Mubarak, the Aga Khan said the Al Azhar park project and associated community schemes in a rundown Cairo neighbourhood served as a model for improving dilapidated quarters of historic cities around the world.
The 74-acre Al Azhar Park, which overlooks the minarets and maze-like streets of Islamic Cairo, is part of a $30 million revitalisation programme by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture’s Historic Cities Programme.
The Aga Khan organisation has also restored houses, provided micro-financing for local businesses and set up training and employment programmes for residents of Darb Al Ahmar, which means “the Red Road” in Arabic.
Work started on the park in 1997 and it opened to the public last year. The project was the brainchild of the Aga Khan, spiritual leader of the world’s 20 million Ismaili Muslims.
The Aga Khan, whose ancestors, the Fatimids, ruled Cairo between 908 and 1187 A.D., was also on hand for the signing of a memorandum of understanding between his organisation and Egyptian authorities to further develop the impoverished Darb Al Ahmar neighbourhood, home to 200,000 people.
Darb Al Ahmar abuts the park and hugs the 12th century Ayyubid Wall, which once surrounded the city to keep out invaders and was buried in tonnes of rubbish before the cleanup began in 1997.
Under the new agreement, the Aga Khan will run a $11 million programme to run clinics, educate children and restore 150 neighbourhood houses.
Excavated from under tons of trash and rubble, the Ayyubi wall – named after famous Muslim ruler Salah-al-Din ibn Ayyub – is dotted with 15 towers and boasts several gates.
One of the gates, Bab Al Barqia, will serve as one of the park’s entrances when the site’s restoration is complete in two years, offering a welcome green space in the over-populated metropolis.
“We went around to see other gates in Cairo to help reconstruct Bab Al Barqia,” explained Elisa Del Bono, an Argentine restoration specialist assigned to the wall.
Traces of blue paint on one of the adjacent towers may indicate it was once blue all over, she said.
The excavation, which began in 1999, uncovered stones dating back to pharaonic times and recycled by the site’s Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman rulers and artifacts from the Ottoman Empire’s late period.
“We’ve founds dozens of smoking pipes,” said French archeologist Julie Monchamp, pointing to several boxes filled with ornate handmade pipe heads made out of clay.
“There used to be a factory in the area and tubes made of bamboo were affixed to the heads,” she said, also showing fragments of clay jars, some glazed in vibrant blue hues.
Less than a metre away from the wall lies a mish-mash of shacks and freshly painted apartment blocks, part of the low-income Dar Al Ahmar neighbourhood that was partly rehabilitated under the project.
Job training and employment opportunities were also created for its inhabitants, some having to do with the restoration of the wall and landmark buildings in the area such as a 13th century palace, a 12th century mosque, a 19th century school and an Ottoman house.
“Each intervention we do is dated so that it’s clear it was renovation work rather than part of the original structure,” said Dina Bakhum, a young Egyptian woman overseeing the restoration of Umm Sheikh Shaaban Mosque whose missing minaret top was reconstructed.
At the site, two men have just come across a heavy carved wooden door which they haul to a makeshift workshop in one of the mosque’s rooms where young Egyptian men and women are busy waxing a similar door or delicately brushing away dust on yet another one to uncover an intricate and colourful geometric design.
Another group is patiently exposing 16th century frescoes of trees and leaves adorning the wall of what used to be a Quranic study room.
“We hope that the building will be revived once its renovation is completed in 2006. It could serve as a cultural centre or a place to teach calligraphy,” said Bakhum.
The mosque’s prayer room is however very much in use and local worshippers come and go as they please.
The site’s renovation stimulated the rediscovery of lost skills, such as the renovation of intricate traditional windows (mashrabiyya) and wood-carved doors.
Hundreds of men and women have also found work as gardeners in the park.
| 
