Chapter 8: The Functional Urbanism of Souq Al-Silah, Cairo: The Political and Economic Impact on Trade in a Medieval Urban Fabric

Soliman, M; Hamza, N

doi:10.4324/9781003143208-11

Chapter 8: The Functional Urbanism of Souq Al-Silah, Cairo: The Political and Economic Impact on Trade in a Medieval Urban Fabric

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Neveen Hamza

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This is the authors' accepted manuscript of a book chapter that has been published in its final definitive form by Routledge, 2022.

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Abstract

This chapter introduces Souq Al-Silah, the ‘market of weapons’ which occupied a strategic location in the capital of Egypt, Cairo. Souq Al-Silah not only equipped Egyptian troops with weapons and provided for their maintenance, it also supplied the civil community with various blades for civil use and self-defence. Souq Al-Silah experienced several social, economic, and political changes over nearly 700 years, that altered the Souq’s urban and architectural morphology, and impacted the socio-urban fabric of the market and other areas in the historic district of Al-Darb Al-Ahmar. Today, although the weaponry industry has completely vanished, what remains is an area for daily shopping activities, other evolving crafts such as carpentry, and a long history, worth remembering and capturing in rehabilitation projects of the area as living evidence of the impact of socio-political changes that markets bring to communities