ARCE
Historic Cairo Architectural Mapping
Project Director: Dr. Nicholas Warner
Project Duration: 1996 - 1998
Project Location: Cairo
A multitude of historic monuments and buildings survive throughout Historic Cairo, each with their own intricate, complex history and background. Erected at varying points in time, they have each played key roles in Egyptian history and have continued to occupy a significant, pivotal space in the fabric of urban Cairo. The intention behind the Historic Cairo Architectural Mapping (HCAM) project was to record the disposition of public space within the city as it relates to, informs, and is informed by the historic monuments and buildings of Cairo. The HCAM project, conducted by Nicholas Warner, was motivated by the ongoing loss of Cairo’s heritage due to environmental and anthropogenic factors to record as much of this heritage as possible before its potential disappearance.
The HCAM project prioritized monuments registered in the Index of Monuments but did not exclude other significant buildings that were either unregistered or deregistered. The area of the map extended from Bab al-Futuh and Bab al-Nasr in the North of Cairo to Ibn Tulun Mosque in the South. Documentation for many of these monuments did exist, but none ever incorporated into a large-scale plan of the city.
In total, a map comprised of 31 map sheets was produced, which were divided into seven groups, all found in Nicholas Warner’s book, The Monuments of Historic Cairo: A Map and Descriptive Catalogue (American University in Cairo Press, 2005). The project was originally projected to take six months, but this period was subsequently extended at no-cost to incorporate additional information. The first phase of the work comprised the purchase and gluing together of 1:500 scale irregularly shaped cadastral survey maps from the 1920s and 1930s, which were then cut up into rectangular sections of 550 x 800 mm. Phase two was a walking survey to assess major changes to the urban landscape post 1937, information which was recorded on reduced A3 sized copies of the base map. This phase also included the survey of all buildings with inadequate existing documentation. Final detailed plans of all buildings were then incorporated onto the master map sheets. The third and final phase was the tracing of the master copy of the map to create high quality line drawings suitable for publication. Dr. Warner utilized cartographic sources from the Egyptian Survey Authority, the Consortium SFS/IGN, and the first and second editions of the Map of Mohammedan Monuments of Cairo, which were all supplemented with detailed surveys of smaller areas by the Arab Bureau of Consultants, Ecole d’Architecture de Versailles, and Caravan Consultants. Detailed plans were also sourced from the archives of the Supreme Council of Antiquities.
Additional funding from the Barakat Trust was acquired to support a Research Assistant whose role it was to compile documentation on deregistered buildings. Any plans resulting from this work were incorporated into the map.
Funding note:
The Historic Cairo Architectural Mapping (HCAM) project was made possible through funding provided by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Grant No. 263-0000-G-00-3089-00, administered by the Egyptian Antiquities Project (EAP) of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). Additional supplementary funding was provided by the Barakat Trust.
Statement of responsibility:
Scattered across what is termed “Historic Cairo” are countless buildings and monuments with a long, rich history. Under the auspices of the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), Dr. Nicholas Warner completed the survey and documentation of 400 of these monuments in the 1990s. The Historic Cairo Architectural Mapping (HCAM) project was made possible with the support of the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities (formerly the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities).
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