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Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology

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Posted at Nov 27/2006 01:36PM:
Joey: One of the original Islamic foundings right after the Islamic conquest of Egypt in the 7th century, this was the capital of Egypt until Fatimid times and the construction of Cairo to the north. Even then, the two cities grew towards one another and eventually merged. Throughout this time, due to its location on the Nile, with access to both the Meditteranean downriver and the Red Sea nearby, and on the trade routes to and from Africa and the Levant, it was a (the) major trading center of the Islamic world, rivaling and eventually surpassing Baghdad as that city declined. It prospered from Ummayid times until the early 16th century, when its monopoly on the Sourthern Route to the East was broken by the celever Portuguese and Vasco de Gama. It was near this time that the city fell to invading Ottoman Turks.
According to Abu-Lughod, Cairo-Fustat was the "one slender thread" that remained of the "world system" of the 13th and 14th centuries. The other two routes to the East (from Europe) had been disrupted by warring Mongol factions, the sack of Baghdad, and the eviction of the Crusaders from Syria, so for Europeans the Southern Route (via the merchants of Cairo-Fustat) was the only viable option. This too dwindled over time as Egypt (and the world) was racked by poor harvests and the Black Death.