Who Knows Anything About The City Of The Dead In Cairo, Egypt?

The City of the Dead was not originally a city; it was a large area where Egyptians, right from the times of ancient rulers, buried their dead. In those days, cemeteries were considered a part of the Egyptian life. There are two large cemeteries, bordering northern as well as eastern Cairo. The cemetery in northern Cairo covers a large area that has great monuments that pay tribute to the magnificence of the Egypt from those times. This area to the north of the current city was six kilometres long when it was first set up after General Amr ibn al-As came to Egypt in 639 AD.

Currently, however, the City of the Dead has been more than living up to its name. The mammoth housing problems that Egyptians face everyday has ensure that at least five million people from the lower strata of Cairo's population have moved into these monumental areas, and the graves now share space with them. There are countless number of poor in Cairo for whom the City of the Dead is their source of shelter now.

Try this: The city of the Dead
A History of Cairo's cemetery communities
by Jaffrey A.Nedoroscik