“Whatever manufactured items there are in the world,” wrote the Ottoman traveller Evliya Çelebi in 1671, “the poor of Cairo get hold of them, set them out and trade in them.” Nearly 350 years later, this tradition lives on in al-Darb al-Ahmar. This neighbourhood of 100,000 people, south-east of central Cairo, is said to be home to a thousand workshops. The place teems with artisans crafting everything from tents, books, boxes and brass lanterns to glass bowls and silk carpets.



The view from the minaret of the Amir Khyarbek Mausoleum across al-Darb al-Ahmar toward the citadel and the Muhammed Ali mosque (above)



The Street of the Tentmakers captures this commercial spirit. Built in 1650 as an arcade, this covered street is a succession of workrooms whose interiors are lined with decorative textiles. From his cubic cavity in the Ottoman-era wall, a weaver called Hasan says that al-khayyamiya, the craft of tentmaking, goes back to the time of the pharaohs. Some of today’s weavers are descended from the families who would produce the kiswa, the fabric that covered the great stone at Mecca, as well as tents, cloths and saddles for those setting out on pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest site.

An artisan stitching a new design. For centuries Khayamiya artisans produced tents, cloths and saddles for those embarking on the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca



It is impossible to conceive of all the elements that you find in al-Darb al-Ahmar Hasan

The area, covering just under a square mile, contains more than 40 monuments built during successive Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk and Ottoman eras. In collaboration with the government, many of these, such as the Aqsunqur mosque and Amir Khayrbak complex, have been restored by the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) – a non-denominational organisation that works to improve the welfare and prospects of people in the developing world.

Sundial on the roof of the Khayrbak mosque; the glass used in the windows was produced by Hasan ‘Hodhod’s’ glassblowing workshop



In al-Darb al-Ahmar, the only foreign faces I see are young Muslims from Indonesia. They are attending the nearby al-Azhar University. Most western tourists currently avoid Cairo due to security concerns; there have been attacks on Egypt’s Christian minority in recent years. Walking around the neighbourhood, however, I feel safe. Countless old men, seated at the qahwa where they drink glasses of coffee or tea, welcome me with the words “Ahlan wa Sahlan”.

Next to the 14th-century Aslam al-Silahdar mosque, I enter a thread-dyeing house. I meet Salama, who has been a dyer for 73 years. Figures are hauling skeins of cotton out of a stone bath of black dye. Dark steaming liquid streams across the floor.

Salama Mahmoud’s dye workshop, where the cotton skeins are dunked in black ink



Salama tells me how, under the revolutionary regime of Nasser, business was good: “The Russians would give us weapons and we would give them cloth.” But in 1967 things changed after the disastrous six-day war against Israel. After Nasser came Sadat, who liberalised the economy, opening it up to domestic and foreign investment. Cheaper goods entered the local market. Small producers were hit. Many lost their jobs.

Cotton skeins are dried in an industrial dryer, and then transported to the roof of the workshop to be dried further in the sun



Most craftsmen and women are immersed in their history, reviving elements of their culture each day. Inside the workshop of two bookbinders near Cairo’s al-Azhar mosque, Aslam and his colleague bind 150 books a day. They are currently binding a tafsir, a commentary on the Qur’an, written in 630 hijri (AD1232). As I leave, Aslam describes one of their “special” books, about Alexander the Great, first produced on papyrus in 330BC.



The books are hand produced and stamped



When Evliya Çelebi visited Cairo in the 17th century, he recorded 20 workshops employing 300 carpet-makers. “They weave silk carpets and prayer-rugs, in praise of which the tongue falls short,” he wrote. In a small room in the backstreets of the nearby Manshiyat Naser slum that skill is alive today. It takes two people six months to produce a two-by-three-metre silk carpet.

It takes two people working eight hours a day, six days a week, six months to produce a carpet this size



They sit on a low bench, facing the vertical loom with a cartoon of the finished design above them.

Hasan reveals the part of the carpet that has been produced so far, and a finished carpet (right)



Near al-Darb al-Ahmar is Cairo’s sprawling City of the Dead, where locals have been buried since the Muslim conquest of Egypt more than 1,300 years ago. Today, because of rapid urban growth, 250,000 Cairenes live among the shrines and tombs. I meet an ex-boxer-turned-glassblower, Hasan “Hodhod”.

A former boxer, Hasan Hodhod is perhaps Cairo’s most famous glassblower, and, below, one of Hodhod’s sons at work



Hodhod says his work has been associated with ghosts and myths that go back to King Solomon deceiving the Queen of Sheba. In an attempt to dissuade him from taking up such arduous work, his father tried to spook him, describing glassblowing as “the craft of the spirits”.

An aish baladi (Egyptian flat bread) seller



At dusk a bread-delivery boy cycles by, balancing a five-foot-long tray of freshly baked aish baladi (Egyptian flatbread) on his head. Moments later I meet Mohamed, a third-generation lantern-maker. Inside his workshop, half-finished brass and iron lanterns rest on shelves and tables. To make the ornate metal pieces, he draws on Cairo’s heritage, using Mamluk, Coptic, Andalucían and Moroccan designs.

Mohammed Hani at work, and (below) one of his sons working on a lantern, pieces of metal and tools of the trade in the workshop



The children of the neighbourhood are so interested. When they walk past, they ask questions, they want to learn Mohamed, lantern-maker

Mohamed says that “Now is the most difficult time,” as the prices of raw materials have risen yet there are fewer tourists – who were his main buyers. He finds an unexpected positive: Syrians have come, because of the war. They started forming workshops, for upholstering beds and producing clothes. Through their enterprise, he reflects, they have contributed to the local economy.

Towards the end of my time in al-Darb al-Ahmar, I garner another perspective, which suggests that craftsmen possess a degree of resilience against historical events. I ask an 81-year-old cloth dyer what impact the 2011 Arab spring and subsequent counter-revolution have had on artisans. “For us, nothing has changed,” he says, “except the president. Our lives, the food we eat, the money we earn – it is the same.”

It seems history laps over this place in layers, like the lines of a tide. The imprint is felt, but only lightly. Amid so much creation and renewal, the sense of flow is palpable. I believe these artisans are at the heart of this. Despite the tumult in their country and the wider region, they get by.

• The Artisans of al-Darb al-Ahmar: Life and Work in Historic Cairo, supported by the Aga Khan Foundation, is on at the Royal Geographical Society, London, 23 March-24 April 2018



