Bob and Ann in Egypt and Jordan 2009

Spiritual Cairo

The theme of today’s tour was religious tolerance. There are three major religions in Cairo – Islam, Judaism and Christianity. All three have places of worship in Old Cairo. That’s where we headed this morning.

Our first visit was to a Coptic church. St Sergius Church is a small 4th century church dedicated to two martyrs and supposedly built on the spot where the Holy Family rested at the end of its journey into Egypt. The church had ornate wooden screens with ivory inlays. This style repeated itself in other places of worship that we visited.

Our second visit was to Ben Ezra’s Temple which was erected in the 6th century AD. The basilica style temple contains a Jewish heritage library with a number of rare manuscripts and interpretation of the Old Testament. It has been restored using donations from people throughout the world after the earthquake of 1996. Another feature of the temple was the stained glass windows. They were created here and at other places of worship using a stucco technique. With this technique, the glass is placed in a frame and covered with stucco. The glass is wiped clean and the remaining stucco holds it in place.

Spiritual Cairo

Our third visit was to the Hanging Church. This Coptic church was built in the 3rd or 4th century AD. It derives its name from its location on top of the southern tower gate of the old Babylon fortress with its nave suspended above the passage. We saw modern mosaics and ancient fresco as well as several more stained glass windows. We also saw trap doors leading to underground chambers where worshipers held services in times when religious tolerance was not practiced.

We got on the bus and drove a while to get to The Citadel. This is one of the world’s greatest monuments to medieval warfare. It began its life as a great military base and served as a fortress and royal city. It now contains the Mohammed Ali (Alabaster) Mosque built in the Ottoman baroque style that imitates the great religious mosques of Istanbul. Because it sits on top of a hill, the panoramic view of Cairo was spectacular. It would have been more so if the smog was not as thick.

Lunch today was in a typical Egyptian restaurant. We had the usual dips with bread along with dolma, stuffed peppers, falafel, eggplant, etc. followed by a creamy rice pudding.

Kham El Khalili Bazaar

We topped off the day with a walking tour of the Kham El Khalili Bazaar. This is Cairo’s largest bazaar. It contains a maze of alleys with small shops and very aggressive vendors. A market like this is always one of the highlights of my trips. I enjoyed it immensely. It made some of the other tour members nervous. Samy lead us through the alleys and then gave us some free time to get into trouble. Nobody did although Candace tried to with one of the waiters at a coffee stop.

This evening we went to a home-hosted dinner. We joined three other couples in the large apartment owned by an Egyptian couple who ran the Giza office for Xerox. As we experienced with other local dinners, the kids and husbands disappear during these affairs and the women do the cooking and entertaining. Our hostess was very outgoing and spoke excellent English. She had travelled a lot and shared these experiences with us. We learned about the local school situation, Islamic traditions (both conservative and liberal – she is very liberal), politics, etc. Our meal consisted of some dips (these are really called salads), dolma, eggplant and beef cutlets. Our dessert was pumpkin pie.

This was another very long day. We were worn out when we got to the hotel.

Here is a map of where we went today: