Islamic Cairo

This guide to Islamic Cairo centers on Bab Zuweila, the old southern gate, and the fifteenth of April 1517, when the last Mamluk sultan, Tuman Bay the second, was hanged from its arch after Egypt fell to the invading Ottomans. It follows his last stand against Selim's army, a betrayal by a Bedouin chief he had once spared, and the defiant words that nearly won him mercy anyway. Along the way it traces the gate itself back to the Fatimid vizier who built it, and the grimmer purpose its walls served long before that April morning.