Cairo is the capital of Egypt 1. The Fatimids founded it beside Fustat 2 3; the museum's data date its founding to 969 CE, a year not on al-Maqrizi's pages. Al-Maqrizi says that the commander Jawhar reached its site with the troops of al-Mu'izz li-Din Allah in Sha'ban 358 AH, settled there and laid out the palace, and ran a wall of mud brick around the palace and the mosque 3 4. He reports another account that it was laid out in Jumada II 359 AH 3. Jawhar meant it to be a fortress between the Qarmatians and the city of Misr 3 5. He called it al-Mansuriyya, until al-Mu'izz arrived from the Maghrib and named it al-Qahira 4. Its mosque was called "the mosque of Cairo" and "al-Jami' al-Azhar" 6.
Al-Maqrizi counts it as the fourth place in Egypt to which the seat of rule moved in the Islamic period, after Fustat, al-Askar and al-Qata'i' 2. It became the caliphal residence, where the caliph lived with his household and his closest people; after the Fatimids, Saladin and those who ruled after him lived there, until al-Kamil moved from it to the Citadel of the Mountain, and it became a city of residence after it had been a fortress 2. Al-Suyuti says that Jawhar built in it the seat of government for al-Mu'izz, known as the Two Palaces 7. Golius writes that people came to the new city from every side and it grew, until it became, as it were, the seat of all Egypt and a market for East and West 8.
This narrative was written with AI help from the sources it cites, and has not yet been read by a human editor.