International Courant
Alexander the Nice by no means noticed the town he envisioned and named after himself virtually two and a half millennia in the past. He was there to map it, utilizing barley grains, because the story goes, after which depart and proceed his conquests earlier than dying on the age of 32 in Babylon, over 800 miles from Alexandria.
He might have died, however his metropolis didn’t.
Alexandria: The Metropolis that Modified the World, by Egyptian-British educational Islam Issa, himself one of many one hundredth technology of Alexandrians, is the biography of what’s now Egypt’s second metropolis.
Alexandria, the Bride of the Sea as it’s now known as in Arabic on account of its location on the Mediterranean Sea, is usually ignored when discussing the world’s biggest cities. Its significance – it was as soon as a rival to Rome – is forgotten, however Issa takes the reader on a fascinating journey by the town’s historical past, its tales and its tragedies.
We meet the town’s rulers – together with a short interval within the ninth century when the town was managed by pirates from Spain – and all of the folks teams who made the town their residence, together with Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Arabs, Turks, French , British and Italians.
The catacombs of Kom el-Shoukafa in Alexandria, Egypt (File: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)
The eponymous founder
The ebook is not only the story of a metropolis, however in its opening chapters of a person whose title echoes by the ages.
Alexandria symbolizes Alexander the Nice. Each turned synonyms for cosmopolitanism: Alexandria in its combined inhabitants and identification, Alexander in its affect on three continents.
However though the person named quite a few cities after himself (Kandahar in Afghanistan and Khujand in Tajikistan have been initially named in his honor), as we speak there is just one Alexandria.
Issa does a improbable job explaining the historical past and takes the time to share the tales, each legendary and factual, that made Alexandria the town it’s as we speak, the biggest on the Mediterranean.
There are some fascinating connections. In response to legend, Helen of Troy was taken to what’s now Alexandria. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was modeled after a golden dome within the Egyptian metropolis. Venice named St. Mark’s Basilica after a saint whose physique was stolen by Venetian retailers from Alexandria. And Zionism, the Arab League and the 2011 Egyptian revolution all have ties to the town.
However to start with, Alexandria was Pharos, an island off the coast of Egypt. A causeway was constructed to the mainland, and the pure gradual deposition of silt widened it into the geography we all know as we speak. The expansion of the town due to its basis by Alexander and the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305-30 BC) that adopted led to a fast inflow of individuals from throughout the traditional Mediterranean world, drawn to what the writer the “Alexandrian Dream”, a spot of huge avenues, ample marble and gigantic parks, the place the Pharos Lighthouse, an historical marvel of the world, served as an historical Statue of Liberty.
The trendy concept of historical past is usually one among wrestle, however the ebook exhibits the wonders of the previous, such because the Library of Alexandria, with its nice columns and sculptures, and ceiling-high cupboards stuffed with papyrus scrolls – and presumably greater than 1,000,000 books in it whole by the primary century BC.
The library itself was a state undertaking envisioned for the reason that metropolis’s founding. Rulers have been keen to pay huge sums to accumulate texts and sacrifice relationships with different states to maintain them in Alexandria. In response to the Alexandrian equal of customs, it was the books that have been seized, not in an try to ban them, however as a substitute to determine whether or not they need to be seized for the library. Librarians have been celebrities, whereas college students on the time have been tasked with remembering their names.
Issa, one of many world’s foremost students of Queen Cleopatra, devotes an illuminating chapter to the good Alexandrian, and a previous chapter to the forgotten Cleopatras – in any case, probably the most well-known was the seventh of her title.
The queen, whose racial identification has now sparked an argument that Issa discusses within the ebook, was as cosmopolitan as Alexandria itself and spoke eleven languages. She was additionally the primary of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty to talk fully fluent Egyptian.
Issa is usually portrayed within the West as opportunistic and depending on the abilities of seduction, however factors out that Alexandrians see her in a different way. He explains how he grew up with festive tales. “She was a supply of pleasure and, I realized, an mental who debated highly effective males,” Issa writes, earlier than citing medieval Arabic sources that painting the queen respectfully, specializing in her contributions to medication, somewhat than from her bodily look.
Folks fishing alongside the coast of Alexandria (File: Amr Abdallah Dalsh/Reuters)
Native data
The way in which Issa interacts with Cleopatra is a testomony to the significance of Alexandria’s historical past being informed by a local, somebody from the town, at a time when the tales of the broader area are sometimes informed by outsiders.
And Issa’s tales and experience communicate to the love he has for his metropolis.
As we depart Alexandria’s historical previous behind, by the Arab conquest after which European invasions, we enter extra trendy occasions, and the advantage of having a neighborhood inform Alexandria’s story turns into more and more vital.
We study extra about Issa’s family historical past in Alexandria, shifting the story away from that of the wealthy and highly effective, which continues naturally by the centuries, to that of unusual folks: a fisherman, a scrap vendor, a trainer.
As a toddler, Issa’s grandfather was a neighbor of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser within the working-class Bacos neighborhood of Alexandria, named after the traditional deity Bacchus. His dad and mom have recollections of the 1967 Six-Day Conflict with Israel and the dying of a relative within the 1973 October Conflict.
Alexandria itself has expanded, from the unique island and the causeway to it, and now throughout the bay, properly into the south. Centuries of decline and rise, along with pure disasters and fast growth, have remodeled the town from the previous broad avenues right into a metropolis of alleys, because the ebook describes it, the place “everybody is aware of the information of his neighbors.” The unrest that has manifested itself in the remainder of Egypt, partly as a result of nation’s financial difficulties, but in addition to the repressive authorities, reared its ugly head in Alexandria with the homicide of a younger man, Khaled Mentioned, by the Egyptian police in 2010. A Fb group could be created to demand justice, finally turning into one of many teams that organized the protest motion that will topple President Hosni Mubarak the next 12 months.
The battle contributed to the town’s identification, however so did its historical past. Issa quotes a preferred lure artist, Marwan Pablo, who sings, “I am not from Egypt, I, I am from Alexandriaaa”.
That does not imply the locals aren’t proud Egyptians, they’re. However they’re additionally Alexandrian.
Town is now not as cosmopolitan because it as soon as was, or as Alexander himself as soon as imagined. The Europeans and the Jews have largely left, however not so way back. Issa’s father remembers the native pastry chef talking to him in Egyptian Arabic when he gave him his order. He was of Greek descent, sure, however Alexandrian.
The Greeks and different communities might have disappeared, however Issa factors out that does not imply the town’s tradition is a monolith.
“In a single room, Muslims and Christians will sit collectively, a bearded man and a goth at adjoining tables, and in line a girl carrying a colourful seaside costume faces one other lady carrying a black face veil,” Issa wrote. . “In modern-day Alexandria, on this globalized metropolis, you’re free to undertake no matter cultural identification you need.”
Sure, it’s an Arab and predominantly Muslim metropolis, however “as we speak’s obvious hegemony lives within the shadow of a melting pot,” because the combined heritage of its inhabitants proves. Issa ends the ebook by describing one among his personal journeys to Alexandria, arriving from the ocean, and the way the town’s historical past nonetheless lives on, each in his creativeness and within the scene earlier than him.
And this isn’t the tip of the story. Alexandria’s present tradition, the homogeneity that has accompanied the town’s postcolonial historical past, Issa factors out, is about 75 years previous, a small a part of its 2,500-year historical past. “So, who is aware of what is going to occur in two and a half millenniums?”
Regardless of the future holds, it is going to be tough to inform the story in a extra knowledgeable and affectionate means than Issa has. Its historical past is a tribute to Alexandria, a reservoir of data in regards to the metropolis, and a marker for individuals who need to inform the tales of the world’s nice cities.
Alexander, Alexandria, and a tribute to an awesome Egyptian metropolis | Artwork and tradition
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