Battling bulldozers: Cairo's historic necropolises under threat

The Turab Al Ghafeer graveyard, home to Heba Al Khatib’s* family for generations, still stands along the Salah Salem highway, one of Cairo’s arterial roads.

Al Khatib's father’s side of the family lived on the grounds of what is now the graveyard for centuries and many of their relatives remain buried there to this day.

But it is now one of many monuments and mausoleums under threat of demolition, as the private graves of families and the tombs of notable figures in Egypt's history in the area are razed to make way for development projects, most recently a new highway.

The graveyard is part of the Egyptian capital’s City of the Dead, also known as the Cairo Necropolis or al-Qarafa, a vast network of necropolises and cemeteries dating back to at least the seventh century, which has seen numerous changes over the last three years to make way for new main roads and flyover bridges the Egyptian government says will improve traffic in the megalopolis.

But the site is not just home to ancient mausoleums and monuments – it is also home to many of Cairo’s poor, who for generations have been pushed out to the margins of the megacity.

Al Khatib grew up a stone's throw away from the City of the Dead and spent time doing charity work for many of the families that have been living there for generations.

She was eventually forced to leave Egypt due to her media work but her parents still live near the site and, for the past three years, they have watched parts of the City of the Dead demolished for the new construction, and have also witnessed poor families forced to leave their homes.

As pressure built and housing prices rose in Cairo in the face of intensifying urbanisation over decades, families who could not find a place to live or who managed to find work tending graves began moving into the City of the Dead.

To find living space among the dead, they would convert parts of the older mausoleums or the fenced-in family burial "yards" - which usually had at least one closed room in them already - to accommodate them.

The new highway has the Al Khatibs worried about their family’s graves but, like many others with private plots there, they do not feel they can intervene.

“There's nothing that anyone can do once the government decides a site needs to be demolished,” Al Khatib told Al Jazeera.

“[My parents] know they're powerless ... they're also afraid of the consequences of objecting to the government and the crack[down] on any form of opposition,” she added.

“It's a battle not worth fighting for many people there.”

The current demolitions are part of an ongoing project that began in July 2020, according to Galila El Kadi, a former professor at the French University of Egypt and co-author of the book, Architecture for the Dead: Cairo's Medieval Necropolis.

That year, two thoroughfares were built, Ain al-Hayat in the southern part of the necropolis, and Al-Fardous in the eastern part.

“[Their construction] demolished valuable tombs belonging to famous figures of the Arab renaissance in the worlds of art, literature, economy, and politics,” El Kadi told Al Jazeera, adding that this destruction of the UNESCO World Heritage Site was dubbed a violation of national and international law in the June 2021 World Heritage report (PDF).

Since then, hundreds of burial yards and dozens of monuments have been destroyed for the ongoing project, she says, which is part of a 2008 Ministry of Housing development plan called Cairo 2050.

Cairo 2050 envisions relaunching Cairo as a "global city" through a number of urban planning projects.

The current demolitions for the construction of a highway are a threat to valuable artefacts both north of the Salah Salem expressway, and south of it where there are 11 registered Mamluk monuments, the historian said.

“[These areas] contain the most valuables tombs of important figures of policy, culture, and art. They are registered as mausoleums of great historical, architectural, and spiritual value,” she said.

Civil society groups working on heritage preservation at the site have so far been unable to stop many of the demolitions, recounting to Al Jazeera their sorrow and despair over the loss of the historical sites.

One of the few victories was the campaign to save the tomb of the 20th Century Egyptian novelist and intellectual Taha Hussein, said William Carruthers, an honourary lecturer at the University of East Anglia, and authour of the book Flooded Pasts: UNESCO, Nubia, and the Recolonization of Archaeology.

But according to El Kadi, the remaining tombs will all be separated from one another, isolated as they are surrounded by new roads.

Several theories exist as to why a repository of such cultural richness is being destroyed for development projects, Carruthers explained.

One explanation is that it will facilitate access to the new administrative capital, which has been under construction for the last few years and which involves military contractors and investment from Gulf countries, he said.

Others say it is to facilitate army access to the centre of Cairo to quell uprisings, in the aftermath of the 2011 Tahrir Square revolution of the Arab Spring, he added.

Finally, there is the theory of infrastructural development, with the projects expected to increase Egypt's income, the historian continued.

“I've seen some people saying ... Egypt needs this,” Carruthers told Al Jazeera. “I don't know how widespread that opinion is, to be honest.”

The most recent demolitions began in April, with bulldozers crushing dozens of family graves, leaving behind piles of rubble, El Kadi said.

“This spectacle of desolation replaced the memorable image of lovely, designed tombs standing along wide, planned streets,” she said.

The demolitions will also soon displace the families squatting or living in improvised housing in the City of the Dead for generations.

Al Khatib said many of the families she spoke to over the years in the City of the Dead were guards hired by families who owned the burial yards, like hers.

Some passed the job on to their children, staying in the City of the Dead for decades.

“The community of graveyard inhabitants are always overlooked and have been historically marginalised,” said Al Khatib.

Many do not have access to birth certificates or forms of identification, cannot afford basic necessities and are living “on the margins of society” with little consideration given to them by any government, she added.

Many families who made the burial yards their home for generations now do not have anywhere else to go.

“I fear that there's really no plan ahead for their housing or support,” said Al Khatib.

According to Carruthers, development projects that displace residents are not foreign to Egypt.

The centre of the city of Luxor was excavated a few years ago and residents who had their homes uprooted were offered housing elsewhere, he said. In the 1960s, the construction of the Aswan High Dam flooded a large area and residents were offered resettlement, he added.

“Development projects of various sorts have always sort of led to this kind of thing happening,” he said.

Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has said people in any residential buildings cleared for national projects will be compensated to help them relocate, according to Egypt's English daily Al-Ahram, but many of those among Cairo's most destitute in the City of the Dead are unable to afford to move into apartments elsewhere at all.

“The complete lack of regard to both the history of the architecture and sacredness of grave sites as well as the modern-day inhabitants of those graveyards is mind-blowing,” said Al Khatib.

*Name has been changed to protect identity.