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MISHA BORISOFF
XENIA NIKOLSKAYA is an award-winning
Russian–Swedish photographer, curator, and
teacher currently based in Cairo. A former
curator of the Russian National Centre
of Photography and former head of Rossiya
Segodnya’s exhibition project department,
she is a Fulbright Fellow with a PhD from
Sunderland University, UK. She has taken
part has taken part in more than forty
international exhibitions and her works are
preserved at the State Hermitage Museum
in St. Petersburg. She is the author of
The House My Grandfather Built, which won
the 2021 Swedish Photobook Award.
Front: Villa Casdagli, Garden City, Cairo, 2010.
Back: Dome, Tiring Building, Cairo, 2010; staircase
in former Central Bank, Cairo, 2019. Photographs
by Xenia Nikolskaya.
Jacket design by studio medlikova
Printed in China
Nikolskaya
Between 1860 and 1940, Cairo and other
"Very arresting images."—BBC “Grandeur and dilapidation . . . large cities in Egypt witnessed a major
"Large, carefully composed and beautifully lit images."—Sunday Telegraph frozen in time.” —The National construction boom that gave birth to
extraordinary palaces and lavish buildings.
These incorporated a mix of architectural
"The Cairo [Nikolskaya] captures with her lens is a European city, its grandeur and dilapidation devoid styles, such as Beaux-Arts and Art Deco,
DUST
of exotic oriental motifs and shown as somehow frozen in time."—The National with local design influences and materials.
Today, many lie empty and neglected, rapidly
succumbing to time, a real-estate frenzy, and
an ongoing population crisis.
In 2006 Russian-born photographer
Xenia Nikolskaya began the process of
Xenia
D UST
documenting these structures. She gained
EGYPT’S FORGOTTEN ARCHITECTURE
exceptional access to them, taking photographs
Nikolskaya at some thirty locations, including Cairo,
Alexandria, Luxor, Minya, Esna, and Port
Said. These photographs were documented
in the first edition of DUST: Egypt’s Forgotten
EDITION
EXPANDED
REVISED
Architecture, which soon after its release in
2012 became a rare collector’s item.
"Dust explores the conditions and relevance of empty architectural spaces in Egypt, presenting an entwined
This revised and expanded edition includes
dualism: dust as materiality that layers the city, literally tracing the passage of time upon urban objects — but also
photographs from the first edition together
as a temporal metaphor that registers these changes on the level of memories, both past and present."
with extra unseen images and new photographs
—Cairo 360
taken by Nikolskaya between 2013 and 2021.
It also includes previously unpublished essays
"Nikolskaya brings these palaces back to life."—Egypt Today by Heba Farid, co-owner of the Cairo-based
photo gallery Tintera, and architect and urban
"Extraordinary . . . The book documents the abandoned palaces and salons of an Egypt you donʼt often see planner Omar Nagati, co-founder of
in the headlines: the golden age of Cairene opulence."—Roads & Kingdoms CLUSTER, an urban design and research
platform, also in Cairo.
DUST: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture
EGYPT’S FORGOTTEN ARCHITECTURE
ISBN: 978-1-649-03136-5
leads us seductively into some of the most
breathtaking architectural spaces of Egypt’s
recent past, filled with a sense of both the
immense weight and the impermanence
9 781649 031365
of history.
The American University in Cairo Press
www.aucpress.com
 DUST

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 1 2/1/22 12:56 PM

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 2 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 DUST
EGYPT’S FORGOTTEN ARCHITECTURE
REVISED AND EXPANDED EDITION

Xenia Nikolskaya
With contributions by Omar Nagati and Heba Farid

The American University in Cairo Press

Cairo New York

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 3 2/1/22 12:56 PM

 This edition first published in 2022 by
The American University in Cairo Press
113 Sharia Kasr el Aini, Cairo, Egypt
One Rockefeller Plaza, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10020
www.aucpress.com

An earlier edition of this book was published as Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture by Dewi Lewis in 2012

Copyright © 2022 by Xenia Nikolskaya

Except “Downtown Cairo and the Politics of Heritage” copyright © 2022 by Omar Nagati; “The Making and Exhibition of Dust” copyright © 2022 by Heba Farid

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 649 03136 5

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Nikolskaya, Xenia, author, photographer.
Title: Dust: Egypt’s forgotten architecture / Xenia Nikolskaya.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021055857 | ISBN 9781649031365 (hardcover)
Subjects: LCSH: Architecture, British colonial—Egypt—Pictorial works. |
Architecture—Egypt—History—19th century—Pictorial works. |
Architecture—Egypt—History—20th century—Pictorial works. |
Architectural photography—Egypt.
Classification: LCC NA1581.6 .N55 2022 | DDC
720.962/09034—dc23/eng/20220114

1 2 3 4 5 26 25 24 23 22

Designed by Fatiha Bouzidi

Printed in China

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 4 2/1/22 12:56 PM

 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments 7
Xenia Nikolskaya

Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition 9

Xenia Nikolskaya

Downtown Cairo and the Politics of Heritage 19

Omar Nagati

The Making and Exhibiting of Dust 25

Heba Farid

The Photographs 37

Notes on the Buildings 149

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Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 6 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
F
irst of all, I would like to thank Heba Farid and Zein
Khalifa from TINTERA and Salima Ikram for initiating
the idea of the second edition of Dust; Carol Berger
and Alexandra Moschovi for helping me to express my
thoughts; and Sergey Ivanov, Ayman Monged, Paul Geday,
Walid Ramadan, Pierre Alfaroba, Waleed Montazer, Sherif
Sonbol, Hela Faris, Mahmoud Sabit, Mohamed al-Hozayen,
Rustam Habibulin, Eddie Coucou Idriss, Shady El Mashak,
Michel Shenuda, Kamal Eldin Eltazi, Amgad Nagib,
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 7
XENIA NIKOLSKAYA
Mohamed El-Sheikh, Carol Nabil, Ahmad al-Bindari, Mamoon
Azmy, Karim Mahmoud, Karim Shafei, and Dorte Vestentoft
Zaalouk for inviting me to their houses, sharing their opinions,
and helping me with my work.
I would also like to thank Amparo Baquerizas, Rodrigo
Gratacós Brum, Heba Habib, Omar Al-Zo‘bi, and Natalia
Kopelyanskaya for their daily support during these last Cairo
years. Last but not least: my mother Xenia Nikolskaya Senior
and my husband Thomas Lund, for everything.
2/1/22 12:56 PM
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 8 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 INTRODUCTION TO THE REVISED
AND EXPANDED EDITION
A
friend once told me, “Cairo, in your pictures, looks
like the aftermath of a nuclear holocaust.” He was
referring to the scale and persistence of architectural
decay in Egypt and the number of forgotten and abandoned
places I had managed to capture. This long-term project, which
brought together examples of European-style architecture from
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, ended up
as a book. Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture was published in
2012 by Dewi Lewis, with an introductory text by On Barak,
senior lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern and
African History at Tel Aviv University. Strangely enough, the
last pictures were taken on the eve of the Egyptian uprising
of 25 January 2011, and I completed the final selection of
photographs on 11 February 2011, the day President Hosni
Mubarak stepped down. I was sure this book would put an end
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 9
XENIA NIKOLSKAYA
to my fascination with this topic, but little did I know what
would come next.
I first traveled to Egypt in 2003, to work as a field
photographer on a Russian archaeological site in Memphis.
This trip was overwhelming. I was too busy taking photos of
artifacts and excavations to see much of the country (believe
me, the life of an archaeologist is nothing like an Indiana Jones
movie), but I felt a strong attraction.
The story of Dust began in Serageldin Palace, in 2006, when I
came back to Cairo. In the first edition of the book, I describe in
detail the experience of my first visit to the palace:
Here was Sleeping Beauty’s palace. Yet it looked as
if it was still occupied, as if the owners had only just
left. Beneath a glass ceiling, books and photographs
lay scattered around. On one side was the library
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 and salon and on the other the dining room. A pink
marble staircase led up to a galleried balcony and to the
bedrooms: at its base stood two griffins. Marble, silk,
polished wood, crystal, mirrors and paintings—the place
seemed transformed into a theatre in which a drama
had just been acted out—a very private drama, one that
fills you with curiosity and guilt, rather like reading
someone’s personal letters.”1
In January 2006, I began—over several trips to Egypt,
followed by a relocation to Cairo in 2010—to collect details
of buildings that remind us of European capitals in Egypt,
particularly in Cairo, including information about their history
and current state. I was scouting these buildings in order to
gain the access needed to photograph them. Initially, I was
driven by curiosity, but I came to realize that these structures
were in great danger and one way to preserve them was
through written and photographic documentation.
The buildings presented in Dust, instead of being made
into monuments, have become invisible even to the city’s
inhabitants. Like an archaeologist, I rediscovered these
buildings and brought them back into the light: the creation
of a new artistic narrative around them gives them a future,
or at least some hope for a future. These structures may have
fallen into disrepair but they now constitute newly discovered,
fragile spaces. To use an archaeological analogy again, Dust is a
“secret chamber.” As Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of the State
10 Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 10
Hermitage Museum and curator of the exhibition Dust: Cairo’s
Forgotten Architecture (2015), suggested,
Decrepit architecture is wonderful, but not long-lived.
Either it collapses, or it is restored or reconstructed, losing
the charm of its authenticity. This happens in all great
cities. . . . The aesthetics of a withering away is one of the
forms of propaganda of renewal. When the renewal takes
place, it is not only the document that remains — there is
also an artistic memory.2
Dust was intended as an honest record of people’s attitudes
to property, heritage, and history. Egyptian government
officials working in the cultural sector were sometimes critical
of the Dust project because it does not portray the country in
a glamorous light. In 2007, the Egyptian Cultural Centre in
Moscow was eager to host an exhibition of the project in its
space. Upon discovering, however, that there was not a single
image of the pyramids in the selection of photographs, the
Centre withdrew its invitation. Cairo Press Center employees
were similarly not supportive of requests to visit certain
locations because of the poor condition of the buildings.
When requests were accepted, the Press Center would usually
send someone along with me to supervise my work. Most
of these individuals were unremarkable, except for one who
accompanied me during a trip to Alexandria in 2009. Let us call
her Madame Nagat. She was a short, unfriendly woman, who
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 drove a small red Fiat and was always dressed in black from
head to toe. She accompanied me to the Omar Tousson Pasha
Villa, which today houses Alexandria University’s Faculty of
Fine Arts. One morning we entered the villa courtyard, which
was full of easels, unfinished sculptures, and sketching students.
From there we proceeded to the building, where we were joined
by a curator from the university, who wished to accompany
us as well. The building inside looked as though it had been
refurbished in the 1970s or 1980s, with wooden panels, which
were fashionable at the time. We had been wandering along the
corridors for some time when we stumbled upon a classroom
full of loud students and a rather bored-looking professor. He
was happy to chat and asked us what we were looking for. I
told him my story: that I was looking for original interiors of
grand buildings from the late nineteenth to early twentieth
centuries. He told me that nothing remained authentic except
for the room downstairs. We went downstairs and opened a
door onto a vast art deco bathroom painted in green. The floor
was carpeted with plastic bottles and empty bags of chips, bits
of paper and other trash—a sort of blizzard of modernity which
created a surreal image. I was about to set up my tripod when
Madame Nagat rushed into my frame and cleaned the floor in a
matter of minutes. I was upset because I felt that she had ruined
my photograph as I had imagined it. But later, as I was editing
the images, I found myself appreciating her initiative: she had
helped me to create a magical emptiness.
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 11
A few years later I was reading Russian Journal by John
Steinbeck, the 1948 account of his trip to the Soviet Union in
the company of the famous Magnum photographer Robert
Capa. In this book he had created a fictional letter entitled “A
Legitimate Complaint by Robert Capa”:
The hundred and ninety million Russians are against me.
They are not holding wild meetings on street corners,
do not practice spectacular free love, do not have any
kind of new look, they are very righteous, moral, hard-
working people, for a photographer as dull as apple pie.
Also, they seem to like the Russian way of living, and
dislike being photographed.
It reminded me a lot of my own experiences in Egypt: even
though I have been taking photographs in the country since
2006, people’s attitudes toward photographers do not seem to
have changed much.
My original plan, when I relocated to Cairo in 2010, was
to stay for just six months, but time flows at a different speed
in Egypt. I started teaching photography at the American
University in Cairo and traveled around Egypt every weekend
to look for magical places and dusty interiors. It was a
wonderful time. When I was a student at the Art Academy in
Saint Petersburg, I had studied ancient Egyptian art on broken
black-and-white slides from a teacher who had never been
to Egypt. Back then, in 1992–93, it was difficult to conceive
Xenia Nikolskaya 11
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 of ever visiting Egypt beyond these slides or to imagine that
Cairo could one day become my home. This was not long after
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the name of the country in
which I was born, which, just like the name of my hometown,
Leningrad, no longer exists. 3
During my work on this project, I had many strange
encounters with unusual characters. I remember a rotund
ten-year-old boy who took me on a tour of his family estate
somewhere in the Nile Delta, bossing his driver around like
he was King Farouk, while regaling me with stories about
“the old good days,” when his family had owned the entire
governorate.
On another occasion, a friend of a friend, S., wanted to
show me his uncle’s horse farm in Kafr El-Zayat and asked
me to bring along a male companion so that his conservative
uncle would not think I was his mistress. I put a lot of time
into the preparation and asked several male friends if they
could accompany me, but before we could go, S. had a heated
argument with his uncle, after which all discussion of the horse
farm was dropped. I wonder if he had ever actually spoken to
his uncle or if it was all in his cloudy mind; he was a heavy
hashish smoker.
But there were also a lot of amazing surprises along the way.
In 2007 I knocked on the door of Mahmoud Sabit’s mansion
in Garden City and ended up in a fairy tale. His grandmother,
Fatma Moharram Chahine, the wife of Mahmoud Sabit Bey
and a cousin of Queen Nazli, the second wife of the former
12 Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 12
King Fuad of Egypt, purchased the house in 1920 from
Theodore Cozzika, a Greek industrialist. It’s not clear who the
architect was, but the name of Max Herz has been suggested,
while the interior design of the first floor was undertaken by
Krieger Co., a Parisian firm. We had an amazing conversation
about history, his family legacy, and the Egyptian cemetery in
the Crimea. Six or seven hours and many cups of tea later I left
his place full of ideas and inspiration.
I also remember my trip to Esna in the spring of 2010,
where I met the wonderful Mohamed al-Hozayen, a
businessman and proud Esna resident. He gave me very clear
instructions: take a train to Luxor, jump out at Esna, and
he would meet me on the platform. And so I did. Early one
morning, I arrived at an empty Esna train station to find a
lonely silhouette of the man who turned out to be Mohamed. It
was one of the most exciting trips I have ever had: we spent the
entire day visiting different buildings belonging to his family.
Over the years, I tried different ways to arrange access to
the buildings I wanted to photograph: using official channels
(this will not get one further than the Pyramids in Giza),
making use of friends’ connections, and working guerrilla
style. Working with a film location manager, Idris, a charming
young man with amazing social skills, turned out to be very
useful: everyone believed we were going to shoot a Hollywood
blockbuster. Photographers, especially foreigners, are often
seen as suspect figures, possibly spies—and not just in Egypt.
During a September 2009 lecture delivered at the Metropolitan
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 Museum of Art in New York, Robert Frank confessed that he
was arrested several times while working on his landmark
photography book, The Americans. In the course of working on
Dust, I had three interactions with the Egyptian police during
the period 2006–2010, but my experience with the regime at
that time was not overly intimidating. Looking back, I can’t
really say if it would be possible to accomplish this project
today, because the situation with commercial property and
architectural heritage is still very complicated, and the security
presence very strong.
As an outsider in Egypt, I had no personal relationship
to the historical period of the buildings, in contrast to the
German photographers Bernd and Hilla Becher, who had a
long personal history with their subject matter: disappearing
factory spaces in Eastern Germany. And yet when I visited
downtown Cairo for the first time, I was struck by a constant
feeling of déjà vu: the city looked almost like St. Petersburg,
but “occupied” by strangers. If the Arabic signage and people
in gallabiyas were removed, it could easily be mistaken for my
hometown, which had similarly been designed and built along
European lines as part of a larger project of modernization. The
founder of Saint Petersburg, Tsar Peter the Great, had a vision
not unlike that of Khedive Ismail, of “opening a window onto
Europe” by constructing a new, European-looking capital.
St. Petersburg was built by foreign architects, such as Trezzini,
Rastrelli, and others who received fame and appreciation
abroad, but produced nothing remarkable back home. This
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 13
special relationship between the foreign and the local is not
unique to Russia and can be applied to Egypt as well.
My plan was to photograph buildings that had been
abandoned or repurposed, in part due to complicated
inheritance and property ownership laws in Egypt. Disputes
between relatives are commonplace, with inheritance court
cases sometimes dragging on for generations. Meanwhile old
rental contracts can sometimes leave landlords with no income
to maintain the buildings. These are just some of the many
complex reasons why the ownership and maintenance of
historical buildings can remain in a state of limbo for decades.
My perspective as an outsider provided me with the tools
to document these structures with an approach devoid of
sentimentality. When I first began to exhibit some of the
Dust images, I was constantly asked why I had not worked
on a topic related to my own Russian heritage. The answer is
that it would have been too painful and close to my personal
memories.
Between 2006 and 2009, however, I worked as a
photographer with the Russian interior designer and
scholar Yanina Parunova, who was taking the architectural
measurements of art deco interiors in St. Petersburg; and
it is likely that seeing decaying Russian architecture in my
hometown inspired many ideas for the Dust project.
While working on my PhD thesis, “Dust: Photographing
Colonial Architectural Heritage in Egypt,” I was looking
for relevant references in the context of contemporary
Xenia Nikolskaya 13
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 architectural and interior photography practice. My goal was
to situate the project within historical and contemporary
photographic practices while explaining my methodological
approach, work strategies, and the book itself. Ultimately, the
focus of Dust is on social and political disaster—on depicting the
layers of history, of use and abuse, of these buildings.
What was once the aesthetic norm is today a strange
relic. Reviewing the “Dust” exhibition at the State Hermitage
Museum, Kira Dolinina, a prominent art critic and associate
professor of art history at the European University, Saint
Petersburg, writes:
This is a great tragedy of colonialism, the collapse of
Orientalism as a vision of the East through the prism of
western culture, the death of this same culture. Death by
uselessness. Death at the hands of the enemy. A city to
which Napoleon brought Europe, the city of the Khedive
Ishmael . . . this oasis of European civilization that was
washed away by revolution in an instant.”4
While architectural artifacts dating from the colonial era
may not have survived intact, their artistic representation lives
on in films, photographs, books, and paintings. Russian writer
and historian Kirill Kobrin, analyzing my project in his latest
book about European-style architecture in Egypt, posits an
5
interesting theory: that the buildings were provincial copies
of outdated architectural models. This may be one possible
14 Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 14
explanation for the neglect of the structures and why they
never acquired a new future in Egypt.
The emptiness of Dust is a consequence of human activity:
it is a portrait of absence, of the generations whose presence
remains visible in the form of forgotten objects or photographs
in these time capsules. The shopping bag hanging on the stairs,
for example, in the picture of “Amin Hagagi Palace, Esna,
2010”—a photograph that depicts a blue staircase lit from
above—suggests elderly inhabitants who used to do their daily
grocery shopping without leaving their apartment.
I have been asked many times if I moved or arranged items
before capturing these images, but this particular atmosphere—
almost evocative of a crime scene—was one of the criteria
I used to select locations. I specifically sought out eerie or
disturbing places that resembled sets from Alfred Hitchcock
movies, trying to extend the cinematographic genre of horror
into the fine art of photography—and this was heightened
by the dramatic lighting conditions. But I did not deliberately
create these conditions. Dust is the chronicle of a spontaneous,
and technically imperfect, artistic exploration.
Dust embraces imperfection, not only in its choice of
locations but also in the lighting conditions. Yellow tungsten
light—typically unwelcome in photography—is one of the
main light sources here, sometimes mixed with daylight,
since some of the buildings were closed, shuttered, or under
renovation. The limitation of available light sources is an
important aspect of the Dust photographs. Color dominance
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 was an important factor as well, in order to maintain a
sense of suspense. The light in Egypt has a specific quality:
outdoors, one can only photograph in the early morning or
late afternoon; otherwise intense shadows give photographs
unnecessary contrast, which is a challenge for color
photography. Indoors, however, one can photograph all day
long simply by moving around in space to find the right light.
My technical approach was largely dictated by the possibility
of access. I tried to be as invisible as possible while maintaining
the distinct quality expected from architectural and interior
photography: a full-frame digital camera with a 21-mm lens,
and sometimes just a monopod rather than a tripod, because
this can be hidden inside a bag. I was operating a digital camera
as a large-format camera, framing and focusing on an LCD
screen. The centrally focused composition was easy to maintain
by holding the camera pressed to my stomach while taking the
photographs, so the majority of images were landscape oriented.
Most of the images were not subjected to post-production
manipulation. In a few cases of extreme contrast between
highlights and shadows, as in “Broken Piano, Bagous Palace,
Cairo, 2011” for instance, I had to make some adjustments for
the print: I minimized the highlights to reintroduce the details,
and brought the shadow up in order to reveal the details there.
But my general approach was to avoid retouching, to respect
the original condition I found the buildings in.
For the first two years of this project, I was simply fascinated
by the alien, yet uncannily familiar, aesthetic of the European-
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 15
style architecture of Cairo. I produced many images—buildings,
street scenes—but the subject matter remained too vast to
grasp. In the introduction to the first edition, I described the
decisive moment when I was able to formulate my vision for
the project. On a visit to the Metropolitan Museum in New
York City, on a day closed to visitors, I had the chance to see
The Milkmaid by Jan Vermeer up close:
In the picture she is alone . . . but she does not appear
sad. In the background, on a fine ceramic tile, we can
see Cupid shooting his arrow. The story is complete: she
is thinking of her lover. At that moment, I realized my
theme: absence.6
If the vision for the project was not clear at the outset, the
title—Dust—was set with the first picture: “Red Living Room,
Serageldin Palace,” taken in 2006. It is an image of what used
to be a lavish dining room, featuring a fireplace with a grand
mirror above it, dark red curtains, and silk wallpaper, all coated
with a layer of dust so thick that stepping into it left traces
like fresh snowfall. “Dust, in its banality, is an unexpected
syntagm to the concealed monumentality of these spaces,”
writes Ahmad Hosni.7 The element of absence in one of the
most densely populated countries in the world, particularly
given the monumentality of these structures, was intriguing.
Dust emphasizes the contrast between these enormous, empty
private spaces and extremely crowded public spaces in Egypt.
Xenia Nikolskaya 15
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 Dust was not just about the discovery of buildings, but of the
spaces and times locked within these locations.
The actual dust, fine particles of solid matter, is so
visible in the pictures that it gave the book its title, and also
symbolized my “archaeological” approach. Dust literally and
metaphorically preserves this heritage, preventing people from
entering and destroying it. Dust provides a filter, creating a
vintage effect by subduing some colors and reducing highlights
and saturation, setting off colors in a specific and esthetically
appealing way, like an old painting. Dust could also be seen
as the beginning of actual cultural layers, if one imagines the
buildings remaining neglected and turning into ruins.8 In
my photographs, I began to create a portrait of absence, of
time, and this absence came to be one of the main selection
criteria as I edited. I eliminated all outdoor shots and focused
my attention solely on interiors. My goal was to build a case
study of architecture as the “repository of time,” to borrow
9
Ahmad Hosni’s terminology, reflecting political and economic
stagnation. It is quite a common practice to turn palaces
into schools or churches into cultural houses, one that is not
dependent on geography. Since the exteriors of the buildings
would indicate the architectural style and might contain
information about the place and time of the photograph, I
purposefully tried to eliminate all images with Arabic signage
or anything that might ground the image in a particular
temporal or geographic location, with only one exception. The
final picture of the first edition of Dust, “Classroom, Prince Said
16 Introduction to the Revised and Expanded Edition
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 16
Halim Palace, Cairo, 2007,” portrays a space that was once
a palace but was later adapted to the needs of a classroom.
Blackboards hang on either side of a blocked door at the height
of a small child, and an official portrait of President Mubarak
is placed over the doorway. The grand proportions of the room
appear in stark contrast to the cheap lamps and classroom
equipment. The last day that I worked on the selection of my
photographs for the first edition was 11 February 2011, the
day that Mubarak stepped down. For this reason, I chose the
classroom photograph as the final image in the book. It was
important to acknowledge the political context: Mubarak’s
removal from office after twenty-nine years in power.10 The
hope was that this would mean an end to Egypt’s political
stagnation and, in theory, an end to my work recording Cairo’s
abandoned buildings.
The first edition of Dust has received international critical
and curatorial attention. The public interest in this topic
has grown tremendously and thus, almost a decade later,
I find myself continuing to take these pictures. Friends and
strangers have frequently approached me and asked me to
take more photographs of building interiors. Back in 2006,
I did not know where this fascination would lead me, nor that
it would attract interest from such diverse social groups and
specialists of various kinds. Photographing old buildings has
become a trend among photographers and the general public.
The project created an interest in the architectural heritage of
this period in different Egyptian cities, as well as abroad, and
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 raised awareness about the need for heritage preservation.
It also gained the attention of real-estate companies seeking
to capitalize on their buildings by providing film crews and
photographers access to these properties for shooting locations.
The word “dust” itself has come to define Egypt’s forgotten
architectural heritage.
When I was putting together the first edition of Dust, I could
only include a certain number of pictures, since the very idea of
the book was regarded as challenging, complex, and difficult to
label (throughout the whole period I was working on it, I could
not get institutional support of any kind )—so my outtakes
had to wait for better days. This second edition contains
NOTES
1. Xenia Nikolskaya, Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture (Stockport: Dewi
Lewis, 2012), 7.
2. Mikhail Piotrovsky, foreword to Nikolskaya, Dust: Cairo’s Forgotten
Architecture, 6. Exhibition catalogue (Saint Petersburg: Publishing House
of the State Hermitage, 2015).
3. St. Petersburg, Russia’s second-largest city, was founded in 1703 by
Tsar Peter the Great on the site of a captured Swedish fortress, and was
named after the apostle Saint Peter. During the First World War, its name
was changed to Petrograd (1914–24) and later Leningrad (1924–91). On
6 September 1991, the original name, St. Petersburg, was restored by a
citywide referendum.
4. Kira Dolinina, “Death by Uselessness,” Kommersant no. 63, 10 April 2015.
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 17
photographs from the first edition, outtakes, as well as more
photographs that I took between 2013 and 2021.
The photograph showing Mubarak’s portrait hung over a
door is now at the beginning of the book. He died in February
2020, but the number of forgotten and abandoned places is,
unfortunately, growing: the former American Consulate in
Port Said is gone; Villa Casdagli and the Prince Said Halim
Palace in Cairo are dilapidated. New neighborhoods rise, but
the decay remains, and deepens—the “natural selection” of
Egyptian architecture continues. But to paraphrase the words
of a friend: “What is bad for people is good for photography:
dust, dust, dust.”
5. Kirill Kobrin, On the Ruins of Modernity (St. Petersburg: Limbakh Press,
2018), 232–44.
6. Nikolskaya, Dust, 7.
7. Ahmad Hosni, “A Subject of Time,” Afterimage 40, no. 3 (2012): 4.
8. Cultural layers, also known as “contexts” or “strata” in archaeology,
are single events or actions that leave discrete, detectable traces in the
archaeological sequence or stratigraphy.
9. Hosni, “A Subject of Time,” 4.
10. When I revisited the place in the spring of 2011, after the 25 January
uprising, the portrait of President Mubarak had been removed and placed
on the floor.
Xenia Nikolskaya 17
2/1/22 12:56 PM
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 18 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 DOWNTOWN CAIRO
AND THE POLITICS OF HERITAGE
I
n 2012 I was invited to a workshop at the German University
in Cairo to share CLUSTER’s work on Cairo’s Downtown
Passages. Xenia Nikolskaya was also presenting her newly
1
released book Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture. The synergies
and overlaps between the two projects were evident, even
if their vantage points were different. For both projects,
the question of urban and architectural heritage at such an
important historical juncture was a crucial one.
Almost a decade later, in 2021, I was approached to
offer an urban context of Downtown Cairo as part of a
photography exhibition of the second edition of Xenia’s book,
organized by TINTERA photographic art consultancy at the
Swedish Embassy in Cairo. The context and the audience
were different, and Cairo has surely changed. Yet questions
pertaining to the politics of urban heritage remain relevant—
and perhaps more pressing than ever. This introduction
to the second edition of Dust is loosely based on the above
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 19
OMAR NAGATI
presentation. I hope it can offer a broader context, and
perhaps a framework, for the creative and meticulous photo-
documentation this book presents.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
For the purpose of this introduction, the evolution of the city
center of Cairo will be discussed through pivotal moments
in its history, including two themes that may inform our
understanding of the politics of urban heritage: moving capitals
and cultural encounters.
A MOVING CAPITAL
The history of medieval Cairo may be construed as a recurrent
interplay between an existing urban agglomeration and a new
capital district. This can be traced back to the seventh century,
as new garrison towns and palatial cities shifted northeast from
19
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 Fustat, to al-‘Askar, al- Qata’i‘, and finally al-Qahira toward the
end of the tenth century. Each new dynasty decided to leave
2
the populous old center and build a more tightly secured walled
city for its ruling class, creating an ongoing duality between an
exclusive elite in their newly gated environment and the urban
masses in their chaotic spaces outside its precinct. The contrast
between ruling and popular urban cultures was to outlast the
changes of dynasties and political regimes.
CULTURAL ENCOUNTERS
Another pivotal event was the modernization process launched
by Muhammad Ali in the early decades of the nineteenth
century, reaching its apex during the reign of his grandson,
Ismail Pasha, towards the end of the century. Inspired by
modern European planning and urban institutions, Khedive
Ismail instructed his engineers to construct a new district to the
west of the existing metropolis, al-Qahira, an agglomeration
of Fatimid, Ayyubid, Mamluk, and Ottoman accretions. The
Ismailiya district was hastily planned to coincide with the
opening ceremony of the Suez Canal in 1867. New palaces,
theaters, parks, roads, and bridges were to showcase an
image of a modern Cairo, in contrast to the old city to its east,
deemed too messy, unhealthy, unruly, and thus unworthy of
his vision.3
20 Downtown Cairo and the Politics of Heritage
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 20
LAYERS OF HERITAGE
The Ismailiya district, which evolved into today’s Downtown
Cairo, was initially laid out as a series of tree-lined boulevards
and grand palaces. Large plots were initially granted to
members of the royalty and rising aristocracy to hastily build
their mansions and surrounding gardens before the big event.
Today only a few palaces survive from that era. Around the turn
of the century, Cairo witnessed an economic boom, attracting
investors and financiers, along with architects and artists from
Europe. Under the pressure of this real-estate boom, many of
the palaces were torn down in the early twentieth century. The
large parcels of land were subdivided into smaller plots, giving
rise to the neo-classical apartment buildings that dominate the
skyline of Downtown Cairo today, turning what was once a
suburb for the aristocracy into a commercial and entertainment
district for the emerging bourgeoisie.4
The cosmopolitan nature of this central business
district, however, was eroded by a number of political and
socioeconomic forces. An end to capitulation laws, wars with
Israel, and nationalization schemes all contributed, by the
middle of the twentieth century, to the departure of foreign
nationals from Downtown Cairo. The changing names of some
of the stores and buildings attest to this transformation.5 The
Cairo Fire of 1952, along with several urban renewal projects
in subsequent decades in Downtown Cairo, also resulted in a
wave of modernist architecture, woven in with the neoclassical
and art deco legacies of the interwar period.
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 During the last decades of the twentieth century,
Downtown Cairo experienced another crucial turning point
in its architectural and urban landscape. The early years
of the economic liberalization policy (Infitah), along with
an oil boom in neighboring Gulf states, contributed to the
gradual flight of the upper middle class during the 1970s and
1980s from Downtown to new and trendier neighborhoods,
such as Mohandisseen and Nasr City. This migration gave
space for low-income activities and communities—such as
warehouses, small factories, and cheap markets—to move in
downtown, resulting in what some have termed a process of
de-gentrification.6 Exacerbated by rent control and gradual
disinvestment, by the turn of the millennium Downtown
Cairo was experiencing clear signs of physical deterioration
and urban decay. This gave rise to a number of programs,
in the late 1990s, for heritage preservation and urban
regeneration.
COMPETING NARRATIVES
During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the
landscape of Downtown Cairo was shaped by several new
directions of change, which converged in the uprising of
2011 and subsequent upheaval. The first was the approach
of the state, which was by then embracing a fully neoliberal
paradigm. This was evident, for example, in the Cairo 2050
project, which basically envisioned Cairo as a site of real-estate
opportunities awaiting development. This included the Nile
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 21
front and rural islands, the foothill of the Pyramids plateau,
and the historic city center, including Downtown. A number
of urban design competitions were organized in 2009–2010—
with cities like Dubai and Singapore and projects like Solidére
in Beirut as benchmarks—to generate ideas for the relocation
of “undesirable” activities and the reuse of existing spaces.7
In parallel to this, large real-estate developers began to notice
the latent cultural value of downtown and to acquire assets
in anticipation of the government’s plans. They proposed
high-end development projects in place of the deteriorating,
heritage-laden buildings, including boutique hotels, restaurants
and cafes, art festivals and entertainment events, and more
recently creative hubs and coworking spaces. This undeclared
alliance between the state and the private developers in
Downtown Cairo was countered by an emerging yet robust
civil society network that had developed around art, culture,
and advocacy initiatives. Their grassroots programs celebrated
the diverse and multilayered fabric of Downtown, and strove to
push back against the gentrification and instrumentalization of
this heritage.
It was precisely at this moment, when these competing
visions and urban narratives of Downtown Cairo were at play,
that the city imploded. Downtown, for reasons beyond the
scope of this essay, became the epicenter of these sociopolitical
and urban transformations. It also became home to numerous
initiatives and programs raising critical questions about the
right to the city and public space, as well as the meaning of
Omar Nagati 21
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 heritage. The next section presents some of the inclusive
approaches towards urban heritage in Downtown Cairo over
the past decade.
ENGAGING URBAN HERITAGE
In 2011, as part of an upsurge of urban initiatives in Downtown
Cairo and beyond, CLUSTER created a number of programs
to engage with urban heritage, occupying a middle position
between creative solutions and critical activism. The relevance
8
of these programs and approaches to Dust is paramount as they
demonstrate the significance of integrated approaches to both
architecture documentation and urban regeneration. Three
approaches are briefly highlighted here through a discussion of
the Cairo Downtown Passages project.
DOCUMENTATION AND MAPPING
Just as in Dust, documentation and archiving is a major step
to capture disappearing spaces in Downtown Cairo. Mapping
entails not only photographic documentation, sketching, and
interviews with stakeholders, but also developing narratives
about the root causes of these processes of deterioration
and urban decay. Furthermore, critical mapping identifies
opportunities for development, such as empty spaces, vacant
plots, and underutilized back streets. Mapping may also
be developed into lists and directories, such as the Cairo
Urban Initiatives Platform (CUIP) and Cairo Downtown
22 Downtown Cairo and the Politics of Heritage
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 22
Passages (CDP), for other researchers, designers, activists, and
policymakers to use and build upon.9
CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT
Another way to approach heritage preservation is through the
adaptive reuse of empty structures and spaces, for example
as sites for cultural projects. The Townhouse Gallery and the
GrEEK Campus are two prime examples of this. A revitalization
strategy may also include curated tours, drawing attention to
some elements under threat of either systematic demolition
or gradual gentrification. Cultural programs would purposely
include certain demographics that may otherwise be excluded
from Downtown Cairo, based on their gender, age, physical
ability, or class affiliation. Examples of these tours and
programs by CLUSTER in downtown Cairo include D-Tour, a
guidebook exploring Downtown Cairo through its passageways,
and thematic tours during the Creative Cities conference, as
well as the Kodak Iftar.10
TACTICAL INTERVENTIONS AND PILOTING
The last of this three-pronged approach to heritage
preservation and urban regeneration in Downtown Cairo
would be proposing alternative visions and development
scenarios, and their execution through small-scale pilot
interventions in public space. One such example is the design
and implementation of the Kodak and Phillips passageways
project by CLUSTER, within the broader vision of Downtown
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 in-between spaces as a framework for urban regeneration, and
of art being a catalyst. Examples of possible alternative uses
include cultural and food festivals, book fairs and vegetable
markets, as well as bike paths and greenways. Passageways
serve as sites of mediation and negotiation between two
conditions: public and private, formal and informal.
POLITICS OF HERITAGE 11
Based on the historical perspective outlined above and some
of the grassroots approaches to Downtown’s urban heritage,
this last section raises a number of questions concerning the
meaning and relevance of heritage to researchers, practitioners,
and policy makers. It proposes two main premises to our
understanding of heritage, being both a cumulative construct
and a site of contestation.
The first premise is heritage as a process: fluid, dynamic,
and hybrid. Contrary to being discrete and pure, having well-
defined parameters for what is “authentic” and “foreign,” urban
heritage occupies rather ambiguous territory between stylistic
forms, historiographic eras, and cultural praxis. In other words,
heritage could be regarded as a process, always in the making.
Secondly, heritage is always political, non-innocent, never
neutral. Far from being a pre-defined, coherent, and consensual
category, heritage is a site of contestation, a politicized term
that is often instrumentalized to advance certain interests and
claims, while excluding others.
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 23
Accordingly, the heritage of Downtown Cairo can be viewed
here as a series of layers, additions, and edits, both physically
and socially. This position problematizes the notion of restoring
a pure origin, such as neo-classical style, or retrieving a
social construct, such as an idealized cosmopolitanism or
a romanticized belle époque. Once acknowledged as hybrid,
dynamic, and cumulative, such “messiness” can be viewed
as integral to the value of this heritage. Celebrating hybridity
and heterotopia, mixed use and diverse communities are not
only progressive, but rather more attainable. What is our
reference point for Downtown’s heritage over the past 150
years? Is it the aristocracy that once occupied it, its mercantile
cosmopolitanism, its nationalized middle class, or its more
recent wave of urban underclass? To whom does Downtown
belong? Those who live in it, or work there, or frequent its
commercial and entertainment districts? Does Downtown,
being the heart of the city, belong to the residents of Cairo at
large? Or perhaps to all Egyptians, who should have a say in
what takes place at the center of their capital? The question
of who has the right to decide on the future of Downtown’s
buildings and public spaces is fundamentally political. It calls
for critical analysis, which begins with documentation and
mapping of its heritage as a point of departure.12
Critical approaches to this heritage thus need to dispel the
notion that its preservation and restoration is innocent and
politically neutral. “Heritage” is often used to serve the interests
of specific groups against others to justify eviction, sanitization,
Omar Nagati 23
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 gentrification, and securitization: Building owners versus
tenants, municipal authorities versus street vendors, state
security versus activists, and so forth. It would be not only naive,
but potentially (if unintentionally) complicit to assume that
advocating heritage preservation is merely a technical question,
decoupling cultural questions from ones of political economy.
From this perspective, Dust could be viewed as not only a
research endeavor and an artistic project, but rather a very
NOTES
1. “Mamarrat Wist al-Balad: Downtown In-between Spaces as a Framework
for Development,” as part of a workshop on “Downtown Cairo: Sharing
Competence about Documenting and Communicating Heritage,” at the
German University in Cairo, in collaboration with DOCOMOMO Egypt,
24–25 March, 2012.
2. Nezar AlSayyad, Cities and Caliphs: On the Genesis of Arab Muslim Urbanism
(New York: Greenwood Press, 1991).
3. Janet Abu-Lughod, Cairo: One Thousand and One Years of the City Victorious
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).
4. Jean-Luc Arnaud, Le Caire: mise en place d’une ville moderne, 1867-1907
(Sindbad: Actes Sud, 1998).
5. Humphrey Davies and Lesley Lababidi, A Field Guide to the Street Names of
Central Cairo (Cairo: AUC Press, 2018).
6. Max Rodenbeck, Cairo: The City Victorious (New York: Knopf, 1999).
7. In 2009 and 2010, four urban design competitions were organized by the
National Organization of Urban Harmony, NOUH, the Cairo Governorate,
and in the case of Khazendar, the Ministry of Investment. They included
the Urban Design and Harmony of Ramses Square, 2009; the Ataba and
Opera Squares Urban Design and Conservation, 2010; the Competition
for the Rehabilitation of ‘Sednaoui al-Khazendar’ Building and the Urban
Design and Harmony of Khazendar Square; and the Revitalization of
Khedival Cairo, 2010.
24 Downtown Cairo and the Politics of Heritage
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 24
political statement on the state of affairs of a city center
under threat of being hollowed out, leading to its potential
gentrification and museumification. The powerful photo
documentation of Dust captures a liminal moment in the
history of Downtown Cairo—gazing back into its romanticized
past, acknowledging the turmoil and vibrant dynamism of the
last decade, and looking forward, with apprehension, into its
uncertain future.
8. For more on these emerging initiatives, their trajectories and interplay,
see two major international conferences organized by CLUSTER in
partnership with the American University in Cairo: Learning from Cairo:
Global Perspectives and Future Visions, in 2013, www.learningfromcairo.
org; and Creative Cities: Reframing Downtown, in 2015, www.
creativecitiescairo.org.
9. Cairo Urban Initiatives Platform (CUIP): www.cuipcairo.org; and Cairo
Downtown Passages (CDP): www.passageways.clustermappinginitiative.org
10. On Cairo D-Tour: https://clustercairo.org/2014/11/05/cairo-d-tour/; on
Cairo Downtown Passages: https://clustercairo.org/2015/11/05/cairo-
downtown-passageways-publications/; on the thematic tours: https://
www.creativecitiescairo.org/conference/; and on Kodak Iftar: https://
clustercairo.org/2016/01/05/cairo-downtown-passages-iftar/
11. This section is largely based on a research and design report by CLUSTER
on Egypt Architecture Heritage Exhibition: Curatorial Framework, supported by
the Danish Egyptian Dialogue Institute, 2019, unpublished.
12. For more on this discussion, see “Mugamma‘ Revisited,” Mada Masr, 25
May 2020, https://mada24.appspot.com/madamasr.com/en/2020/05/25/
feature/politics/mugamma-mosaic/
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 THE MAKING
AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
I
magine accompanying photographer Xenia Nikolskaya on
location the day of a shoot. You are led inside an abandoned
space, probably in a very complicated way—nothing is
straightforward in Cairo’s urban landscape, and abandoned
places are always blocked, barricaded, or otherwise made off
limits. You follow her as she studies the space, the light, the
furnishings and objects, while carrying her kit of cameras,
lenses, and a tripod. You observe the moment when she stops
and decides where to set her tripod. You notice the direction
in which she has chosen to point the lens of her camera. Like
a crime scene, nothing has been changed; she works alone and
in silence.
After the equipment has been set up and you look through
the viewfinder, you begin to truly experience her perspective.
You slowly begin to ‘see’: to understand what motivates this
act of photography, of capturing this particular scene just as it
is. In this moment, your own way of seeing has been altered,
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 25
HEBA FARID
as if the lens you use every day has shifted or refocused. You
experience a realignment of your intellectual framework, the
references and assumptions you habitually use to interpret
what you see. Conscious of the change, your awareness shifts
again as you recognize this new mode of investigation. You
have begun your journey into Nikolskaya’s artistic territory.
There are many elements that have led Nikolskaya to
this place and time. There is the accumulation of influences,
experiences, and investments that has shaped Nikolskaya’s
career and artistic vision up until this point. The ideation,
planning, and administrative obstacles that led to the first
shoot found their seeds of inspirations long ago within her own
heritage. What follows this moment is the rigor of a dedicated
practitioner on the long, laborious path of producing a cohesive
photographic body of work imbued with meaning.
The shoot is only one of many steps resulting in the
production of this work. Within days or weeks of the shoot
25
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 comes a preliminary presentation of images on a contact sheet
or on a screen. Keeping in mind the overarching theme of the
work, Nikolskaya makes a first selection of images, sometimes
with the help of trusted colleagues. The list of locations grows
and the work continues, but only years later does the work
emerge in the form of a printed book. The book is designed
in wide format to emulate antique photo albums, and each
photograph is accompanied by a caption detailing factual
and anecdotal information about each location that has been
gathered along the way. Another year later, a series of exquisite
fine-art photographic prints are produced in a lab in Moscow,
destined to be discussed and displayed in curated exhibitions
and acquired by collectors.
A family heritage of critical and scientific achievements has
been a source of influence for Nikolskaya. Building on this
specific visual and visceral groundwork, with a propensity
toward investigation with the camera, she graduated
from the Russian Arts Academy specializing in art history
from a Western and European perspective. Museums and
galleries were familiar places for her to visit, so it was a
natural progression to begin working in their photography
departments, documenting the artworks within the institutions
and then later on archaeological site missions. The adventure
of archaeological photography began for her there. She started
working for the Russian mission in Egypt in 2003, at the
ancient capital of Memphis, 20 km southwest of Cairo. There,
26 THE MAKING AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 26
she produced photographs of the excavations, of artefacts and
other physical remains for research purposes.
Curiosity being the driving force of scientific investigation,
her eyes were trained to see color, texture, light, and shadow,
to recognize utility in these artisanal creations and the traces of
human hands that once worked on them. In her archaeological
work, she spent much of her time looking down toward the
ground and closely scrutinizing objects. In her time off, she
wandered the streets of Khedival Downtown Cairo, looking
up at architectural facades, often over barricades and walls, or
peering through dark passageways and open doorways.
With so much attention given to the ancient and medieval
architectural heritage of Egypt, the more neglected recent past
became a source of fascination for her. There was something
familiar about the city: some historical parallels between
the construction of Cairo’s modern city center and that of
St. Petersburg’s. For Nikolskaya, very similar economic and
political forces seemed to be at play, dictating the building of
these imposed ‘new’ cities on the banks of prominent rivers,
reclaiming marshlands and transforming them into stylized,
fashionable urban landscapes.
From 2006 to 2011, Nikolskaya worked on developing her
project. She spent long stretches of time travelling around
the country, covering over thirty locations, including Cairo,
Alexandria, Luxor, Minya, Esna, Port Said, and villages in the
Delta. Producing a book of her own urban investigative work
seemed a logical path. In 2012, she found a willing publisher
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 who published the work as a monograph with the title Dust:
Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture. That same year, she had her first
solo exhibition in Cairo at the now closed Townhouse Gallery,
which was an important center for the contemporary art scene
in Egypt for almost twenty years. 1
The book launch and exhibition that took place in Cairo
proved intensely popular—not only because the photographs
are stunning, but perhaps primarily because of the impressive
and unprecedented access Nikolskaya managed to gain to
these forgotten places, within the difficult context of a security
state. This is an observation often made by local audiences
and readers. Other than the official access she gained through
administrative channels, Nikolskaya also had unofficial access
due to a combined strategy of personal connections, charm,
and tenacity.
The fact that the publication and exhibition of these
photographs grants the public access to these sites is a
major achievement of this work. The photographs map out
an itinerary for a domestic tour by proxy. Cataloguing the
locations, Nikolskaya conscientiously included brief historical
notes, providing an important and urgently needed record of
these Belle Epoque spaces, many of which have been destroyed
since 2011 or are currently in the process of renovation.
Published and exhibited in the wake of the 2011 revolution
in Egypt and the Arab Spring, this timely work emerged
in parallel with a local surge of interest in Egypt’s colonial
architectural past. It became a catalyst for new conservation
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 27
and preservation initiatives that developed during those
transitional years, raising awareness among the general
public, as well as within urban development and architectural
associations and institutions.
PRECEDENTS FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC
SURVEY PROJECTS IN EGYPT
Other precedents for photographic survey projects of
archaeological or urban heritage in Egypt only exist in the
context of commissioned state or institutional projects and are
rarely accessible to researchers, let alone the public.
In the case of Islamic architecture, there are two prominent
initiatives, the first being the Comité de Conservation des
Monuments de l’Art Arabe (established in 1881). This was
formed in response to the neglect and deterioration of the
Islamic architecture of Cairo. A rarely seen archive of glass
plate negatives and prints emerged out of this initiative, as
well as the photographic and illustrative works of architectural
historian Sir Keppel Archibald Cameron Creswell (1879–1974),
which laid the groundwork for an extensive study of Islamic
architecture across Egypt.
Another example of a large-scale project is that of
François-Frédéric Boissonnas (1858–1946), a renowned Swiss
photographer, who conducted a survey of the geographic and
ethnographic features of the entire country for the Egyptian
Geographic Society (established in 1875), leaving over thirty-
Heba Farid 27
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 five albums in their collection. There are also hundreds
of photographic albums documenting the construction of
bridges, cataracts, and irrigation canals conducted by engineers
commissioned by the Ministry of Water Resources and
Irrigation, Egypt’s first government ministry in the modern era,
established in the early 1880s.
Other, more site-specific projects are dedicated to Egypt’s
ancient monuments, such as those conducted by foreign
archaeological missions across the country, but also locally
by CULTNAT (the Center for Documentation of Cultural
and Natural Heritage, established in 2000), now part of
the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Much of this work has been
published online using technological tools such as virtual
mapping and 3D displays.
There are also survey projects in book form, such as
the guidebooks to Egypt’s colonial architecture in the Suez
Canal cities of Port Said, Ismailiya, and Suez by Egyptian
modern art and architectural historian Mercedes Volait. These
were published by the IFAO (Institut français d’archéologie
orientale)2, with images by the French photographer Arnaud
du Boistesselin.
More recent examples of publications include Cairo since
1900: An Architectural Guide3 by architectural historian and
curator Mohamed Elshahed. This work catalogs Egypt’s
ignored and abused modernist architecture in a guidebook
format, collected and photographed by various young, semi-
professional photographers, including the author.
28 THE MAKING AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 28
MORE THAN A CATALOG
OF BUILDINGS
The photographs in the series Dust go beyond the precise
cataloguing of sites and objects. They are an exploration of the
nuances of how these sites and objects exist now, and how
they express the stories and dramas they have absorbed over
the course of their history. The title of the work has a dual
meaning: dust is the matter that covers objects and places,
literally marking the passing of time, as well as a metaphor for
the process of memory and erasure.
Audiences and readers are drawn to the photographs
because of a nostalgia for a glamorized past. The choice of sites
and objects in the series not only provide a dreamy picture
of Egypt’s Belle Epoque era (1850–1950) but also show the
evidence of more recent interventions. The display of these
photographs provides a rare chance to visit these spaces and
linger, reinforcing the fact that they are actually closed to the
public. They invite people to reimagine the private dramas
that seem to have just ended, in spaces that give the illusion of
having recently been vacated.
Unlike the aforementioned institutional projects, this
photographic collection of Egypt’s colonial architecture is
being seen and acquired by a wider public. Wider interest
in this work has resulted in various exhibitions over the last
ten years, hosted by major international cultural institutions
and museums. These include a solo exhibition at The State
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia (2015) and a
group exhibition entitled Tea with Nefertiti, which was shown
4
at Mathaf (the Arab Museum of Modern Art) in Doha, Qatar in
2012, at the Institut du Monde Arabe (IMA) in Paris, France in
2013, and at the TINTERA gallery in Cairo in September 2020.
The first edition of the book Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture
was highly sought after and quickly went out of print. The
success and popularity of this work provided an impetus for
this second edition, which contains photographs recently taken
from new locations.
In 2015, Nikolskaya began a PhD based on this project.
Completed in 2019, her thesis “Dust: Photographing Colonial
Architectural Heritage in Egypt,” presented the opportunity
5
for further research and gave her a chance to reflect on the
underlying mechanisms in her work. There, she explores the
possibilities and limitations of the genre of architectural interior
photography as a mode of investigation and interpretation. She
includes a discussion of ethnographic, political, and economic
developments in an attempt to understand how residents view
and treat this architectural heritage in their everyday life.
RESPONDING TO CONTEMPORARY
ART DEBATES
Devoid of people, the photographs readily fall into the genre
of ‘ruin photography,’ the origins of which can be traced
back to the beginnings of the medium when travelers to the
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 29
region sought to capture the ruins or monuments of fallen
civilizations. Within contemporary debates in the art world,
the genre of ruin photography brings into question the ethics
of aestheticizing abandoned and destroyed spaces. Seemingly
without regard for the former inhabitants or the forces that
brought about this shift, this type of photography glamorizes
loss, destruction, and sometimes poverty. It plays into an
aesthetic of decadence—the psychological and emotional
decline of the moral fabric of society.
In a more humanistic interpretation of the genre,
Nikolskaya’s ruins are artefacts of absence. The images are
portraits of a generation, tracing their disappearance in the
places they once frequented and inhabited. Her work is not
necessarily a call to action or a lament for the past. Instead,
she continues to look at these spaces as modern archaeological
ruins and the past as much closer, existing just moments ago.
The material nature of the photographs also captures our
attention. They are beautifully printed, rich with color and
texture and very much alive. We observe the small details,
traces of human interventions. Rather than glorifying an
aesthetic of decadence, Nikolskaya’s photographs invite
us to reflect upon how we experience and understand the
connections between the present moment and our recent
social and urban past.
As architectural portraits of an Egyptian society and
the spaces they once inhabited, the photographs ask us to
contemplate the forces that led to their abandonment: the
Heba Farid 29
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 economic and political factors, and the structures of power that
once built cities like this and are, in part, responsible for their
neglect. They challenge a written and established narrative of
the past by recognizing how the underlying forces of power
have shaped our environment.
Influenced by master painters such as Vermeer and
cinematic legends such as Hitchcock and Lynch, Nikolskaya
was not particularly familiar with contemporary architectural
photography. It was only while doing research for her PhD
that she came across the work of photographers such as Robert
Polidori documenting architectural spaces and their surrounding
environments, Candida Hoffer’s grand, empty interiors, and Yves
Marchand and Romain Meffre’s controversial photographs of
the ruins of Detroit’s industrial spaces.
Positioning her own work, Nikolskaya sees her images within
but also separate from the genre of ‘ruin’ photography. She
explains: “In the context of contemporary architectural/interior
photographic practice, Dust occupies a particular niche . . . an
ethnographic photography located somewhere between [Simon]
Norfolk’s images of the aftermath of war in Afghanistan,
focusing on social and political disaster and depicting the
layers of history of these buildings, their use, and abuse, and
[Anders] Petersens’s documentation of buildings on the verge of
disappearance in Stockholm in the 1960s and 1970s.”6
Nikolskaya’s Dust can also be seen as Cairo’s version of the
work of Eugène Atget, who methodologically documented
the disappearing architecture of early twentieth-century Paris.
30 THE MAKING AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 30
Like precious objects, the material quality of the photographs
resemble old albums or paintings; the cotton rag paper both
mimics the textural layer of dust and amplifies the underlying
concept of the work.
Dust, on the one hand, introduces audiences to a contem-
porary photographic art practice inspired by the legacy of
photographers past. It also addresses the lack of coherent and
accessible archives for anyone who wishes to study the material
culture of Egypt’s modern history.
The project has encouraged a new appreciation of
photography as an art form and inspired a base of new art
collectors. The work has been collected widely and has
been placed in private homes, offices, and institutions. Each
individual photograph is an ‘artefact’ granting its owner an
exclusive piece of Egypt’s heritage.
BACKGROUND OF THE ARTIST
Like many other photographers and artists, Nikolskaya’s entry
into the field could be considered accidental. During her
childhood she was surrounded by close family members who
were amateur photographers. She was immersed in albums
and collections of vernacular images shot and compiled by her
mother, aunts, and uncles. Her mother later discouraged her
from entering the field, saying that it was not a profession for
women. Unbeknownst to her at the time, her mother’s bias
against photography was founded on her dislike of her ex-
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 partner, Nikolskaya’s father, who was an established Russian
photojournalist and educator in his own right.
During Nikolskaya’s teenage years (1985–90), she attended
an after-school program at a secondary arts school in St.
Petersburg, where she was influenced by classical art history.
Museum visits were frequent and she became accustomed to
viewing master artworks. Having briefly considered studying
biology at university, by 1991 she had committed to a career
in the arts. On her second application, she was admitted to the
highly competitive Russian Arts Academy, whose mission was
to graduate new generations of art historians and art experts
and where she received a classical training.
During this time at the Academy, she had the opportunity
to be reintroduced to her father, when she was in her mid-
twenties. Vladimir A. Nikitin, who died in 2015, was a
renowned photojournalist and founder of the School of
Photojournalism at the University of St. Petersburg. By her own
account, it was a remarkable first meeting as she had previously
identified him as a recurring figure in photograph albums she
had grown up with. A press photographer working for major
agencies and newspapers, who worked with Cartier-Bresson
during his Russian visit, he later completed a PhD in art history
and published a five-volume book on the twentieth-century
photography of St. Petersburg, firmly establishing himself as a
photographic historian.
By 1998, Nikolskaya had graduated from the Academy, and
the political and conceptual framework of the Soviet Union
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 31
had collapsed. With few prospects for art historians, Nikolskaya
moved toward photography as a way to earn a living. She
began to work as a freelance photographer for magazines
and a teaching assistant in photography for conservators at
the Academy who focused on the documentation of art and
heritage objects for museums. This gave her continued access
to museums, objects, and artworks. She also started working
directly for conservators and archaeologists.
During this time, she began developing her first
photographic project, Precious Items (2001–2004),7 which can
be seen as a transition from working with objects in a museum
context, to exploring these objects in a more personal way. In
this work she focused on the textures and colors of the objects,
and produced prints on art paper that could emulate the same
material quality as the artefacts.
Up until then, Egypt for Nikolskaya was just something in
the history books, a faraway place, ancient and alien. By chance,
and through her Academy friends, she travelled to Cairo for
the first time in 2003 as a field photographer for the Russian
archaeological mission in Memphis. It was a spontaneous
invitation; she stayed for just one month and did not really
explore the city. Her ties to the mission and experiences as an
archaeological photographer remain strong until today.
Through another chance invitation, this time from the
Egyptian Cultural Center in Moscow, she returned to Cairo
in 2006 on her own. While wandering the streets of Garden
City one afternoon she discovered Serageldin Palace. With the
Heba Farid 31
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 help of archaeologist friends who spoke Arabic, she managed
to enter the palace, which had been vacated several years
before. Entering this grand home, she recalls, was a moment of
congruity. She suddenly knew what her next project would be.
The parallels she saw between the architecture of St. Petersburg
and Cairo were an unexpected inspiration for her.
After this first experience she immediately began researching
the subject. She was introduced to historian Samir Rifaat’s blog
on the architectural history of Egypt, and then later to Samia
Serageldin, granddaughter of the owner of Serageldin Palace,
and author of The Cairo House,8 a semi-autobiographical novel
about the family’s grand home. She continued to actively
search for more abandoned buildings across the city and the
rest of the country, spending the next five years traveling,
visiting locations, and taking photographs.
In 2010, while in Cairo, Nikolskaya began editing the
images on her computer, then printing daily selections of ten
photographs. She would print them in a small format and post
them on a metal display board with magnets. While viewing
her selection, it became clear to her that all exterior images
would eventually be excluded from the final series. The images
that were finally chosen were interior shots that had an
obvious narrative and showed multiple layers of time through
discarded objects, modern interventions, and traces of recent
abandonment. Like crime scene photographs, the images slowly
built suspense. One after the other, they became portraits of
absence, the story of a generation.
32 THE MAKING AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 32
In 2006, two preliminary exhibitions of the work-in-progress
were made at the Hotel Diplomat in Stockholm and the Dmitry
Semenov Gallery in St. Petersburg. They both confronted
audiences who were surprised by the Egypt that was portrayed
in this work.9 The photographs fell outside the bounds of
stereotypical imagery of Egypt, as they were not deserts or
pyramids or temples, typical of nineteenth-century Orientalist
imagery. The excitement with which the work was received
encouraged Nikolskaya to commit further to the project.
After reflecting on her own background, the concept of the
work became even more clear. In 2010 she moved to Cairo,
entirely self-funded, and was invited to teach photography at
the American University in Cairo’s Department of Performing
& Visual Arts, which gave her the administrative structure to
continue her work. She was still living in Cairo in 2011 when
the 25 January Revolution erupted and mass protests shook
the country.
A year later, after struggling to find a publisher who would
even consider her work, the book Dust: Egypt’s Forgotten
Architecture was published. In parallel to the book launch, she
had a solo exhibition of selected images from the project at
the Townhouse Gallery.10 This was her first time exhibiting
the work in Egypt, but against a backdrop of revolution, the
gallery was less interested in showing work that was not
focused on the immediate situation on the streets. There was
an urgency to show local and regional artists and art practices
that were responding to that time. Additionally, the gallery had
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 to negotiate between showing work perceived to fall under the
representational politics of a ‘foreign’ gaze with that of a hyper-
contemporary ‘Arab’ view of current affairs.
For Nikolskaya, the exhibition was an important experience,
marked by a large audience of visitors from various generations,
some of whom also acquired prints. A symposium about the
underlying issues of architectural preservation took place in
parallel with the exhibition. With five well-known experts in
the field of architectural heritage and photography, the speakers
focused on the impact the work had, and the way it highlighted
the importance of archives and heritage preservation.11
During the transitional years immediately after the
2011 uprising, Egyptian heritage initiatives gained a lot of
momentum, sparked by a feeling of hope and confidence in
the power of civil society. But with changes in the political
circumstances of the country, what was once an arena full of
discussion has now become only silence.
From 2012 to 2015, Nikolskaya moved to Moscow to work
at the Russian International News Agency (RIA Novisti), as
head of exhibitions at the photo archives. Curating more
than fifty exhibitions from their collections, she began to
understand how photographers worked and even saw the work
of her father represented in the archive. However, as Russian
state involvement increased within the institution, working
conditions soured, and Nikolskaya became disillusioned.
During these years, the Dust exhibition went on tour. In
2013, it was shown at the Museum of Mediterranean and
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 33
Near Eastern Antiquities in Stockholm, in the rooms that
house their Egyptian collection. There was great interest from
local and expatriate audiences, as well as from the media.
In 2015 the work was exhibited at the Hermitage Museum
in Saint Petersburg, although they showed only the Cairo
photographs, as the director had a personal connection with
Cairo specifically. Significantly, this was only the third time
the Hermitage hosted a photography exhibition; the other two
times were exhibitions by Irving Penn and Annie Leibovitz.
The fourth exhibition took place in 2017 at the Radvilas
Palace in Vilnius, arranged through the Lithuanian Ambassador
to Egypt, who was also a photography historian.
After the Hermitage exhibition, Nikolskaya felt that
completing a PhD would be the next step, to consolidate her
ideas and eventually secure a career in academia. In 2017,
while working on her PhD, she returned to Cairo and began
teaching at the German University in Cairo’s Department
of Applied Arts. She taught foundation courses in digital
photography and advanced design projects that incorporate the
visual image. She continues to teach there until today.
A DEDICATED SPACE FOR FINE ART
PHOTOGRAPHY IN CAIRO
Despite a long tradition of studio photography and cinema
in Egypt, there are relatively few publicly accessible archives,
and preservation initiatives are even fewer. Nowhere in the
Heba Farid 33
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 country can the public see nineteenth- or twentieth-century
photographs displayed or explained. As such, Egypt’s history
of photography has been largely unseen and undocumented
inside of Egypt.
Looking at the development of the fine arts in the more
recent past, little attention has been given to photography.
Aside from a brief engagement with expressionist and surrealist
art movements in the early twentieth century, commercial and
industrial practices have been dominant, with very little room
for artistic expression or experimentation.
In the mid-twentieth century, sporadic exhibitions of
photography took place in hotel lobbies and cultural centers.
These were often self-funded and self-publicized exhibitions
by studio photographers of celebrity portraits or landscapes, or
more creative works by amateur photography club members.
In the mid 1980s, the Sony Gallery for Photography opened
its doors on what is now the Downtown campus of the
American University in Cairo. As an institutional gallery within
the Department of Mass Communication and Journalism, its
goal was to display contemporary and historic photographs
in an academic setting. The works shown were primarily
documentary in nature. Here only a select audience had access
to periodic photography exhibitions in an exclusive setting.
A few local commercial galleries also began exhibiting the
artwork of local photographers during this time. They were
mostly figurative and still-life images, in black-and-white
silver gelatin prints. A magazine called 1000 Words, featuring
34 THE MAKING AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 34
photographic essays and artworks, was also launched, but only
for a short time as the print version eventually disappeared.
Photography was taught at both the Helwan University
School of Applied Arts and the American University in
Cairo’s Department of Performing and Visual Arts (now
Department of the Arts). The former focused on technical
aspects, corresponding with a rise in the commercial uses of
photography at that time, while the latter exposed students
to photography within a contemporary art context, but
with limited facilities. Overall, there has been little support
for, or understanding of, photography as a challenging and
contemporary visual art form in its own right.
But even though photography has been relatively undervalued
in the art scene, all throughout the twentieth century, families
and individuals have had a strong relationship with photography,
documenting themselves and important events.
With the turn of the millennium and the emergence of the
digital era, there was a renewed appreciation for photography
as an artistic medium. It was produced and exhibited within
both commercial art settings and artist-run institutions. As the
government traditionally controls professional associations,
even in the arts, artists independent of state institutions and
syndicates, supported by increased interest from foreign donors
promoting freedom of expression, began creating their own
experimental art spaces. Institutions such as the Townhouse
Gallery (founded in 1998), the CiC (Contemporary Image
Collective, founded in 2004), MEDRAR (founded in 2005),
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 and Cimateque (founded in 2010) became spaces that were
filled with challenging curated shows, artist talks, themed
exhibitions, and symposiums. Initiated by the Townhouse
Gallery but now under the auspices of the CiC, a biennial
festival for the visual image, PhotoCairo (first edition
2002)—a multi-venue event and program with an extensive
publication—became a feature of the art scene in Cairo and
has had six editions thus far. More recently, other independent
cultural venues, educational programs, competitions,
exhibitions, and festivals have emerged, responding to a
growing interest in photography in the public sphere.
As Cairo’s first commercial art gallery dedicated to fine-art
photography, TINTERA was created in February 2019 to bring
fine-art photography to the attention of local art collectors
and place it within a global art market. As part of a larger art
ecosystem—local, regional, and global—the role of the gallery
is to represent artists and photographers working in Egypt or
with Egypt as a site of inquiry or inspiration, and provides a
space for Egyptian photographers to show works that would be
difficult to place elsewhere.
The gallery provides the opportunity for general as well as
specialized audiences to see curated contemporary exhibitions,
along with contextualized historical collections, and to learn
more about how contemporary artistic practices are informed
by the history of the medium.
As the gallery’s third solo exhibition, Dust: Past & Present
was shown from 15 September to 19 November 2020. This
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 35
time, the work was placed within an art market context and
Nikolskaya presented as a fine art photographer. The prints
were acquired by dozens of new and discerning collectors of
fine art photography, marking a new age of commercial success
for the project. Showing the Dust series inside Egypt is a kind
of repositioning. Abroad, it may be viewed as a curiosity,
but within the country, it provides an opportunity for self-
reflection, challenging Egyptian audiences to examine their
relationship with their own heritage.
The story of photography in Egypt cannot be complete
without acknowledging the various actors and significant
initiatives, like Dust and Nikolskaya herself, that have
generated momentum and elevated the situation of
photography. They have encouraged a new generation of
artists and photographers to choose this as their medium of
inquiry and expression. Having gone through rigorous artistic
training, and seeing herself as both a critic and a creator,
Nikolskaya regularly contributes to photography education
in Egypt—in academic and independent institutions, as well
as with individual artistic initiatives. Her awareness of the
importance of photographic archives has also led her to focus
on the history of the medium through engagement with
regional archives and collections, including a collaboration
with Akkasah, the Center for Photography at New York
University Abu Dhabi. She prefers to collaborate with private
or nongovernmental initiatives, to avoid the risk of her work
being exploited to serve nationalist narratives.
Heba Farid 35
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 Nikolskaya’s Dust confronts us with elusive aspects of our
modern cultural heritage that have been overlooked. It brings
those quiet voices, gestures, and interventions forward into the
present moment and in living color. The work has become an
important record—not only of twentieth-century abandoned
urban spaces in Egypt, but also of the lives once lived in
NOTES
1. Xenia Nikolskaya, Dust, Egypt’s Forgotten Architecture (Stockport: Dewi
Lewis, 2012). The exhibition was held between 6 May–13 June 2012 at
the Townhouse Gallery for Contemporary Art, Cairo, Egypt. For more
on this, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Townhouse_Gallery and
http://www.thetownhousegallery.com (Accessed July 2021).
2. Several essays and publications authored or edited by Mercedes Volait,
such as Le Caire–Alexandrie: architectures européennes. 1850–1950 (Cairo:
IFAO, 2001); Port-Saïd: architectures xixe–xxe siècles (Cairo: IFAO, 2006);
Ismaïlia: architectures xixe–xxe siècles (Cairo: IFAO, 2009).
3. Mohamed Elshahed, Cairo since 1900: An Architectural Guide. (Cairo: The
American University in Cairo Press, 2020).
4. Curated by Sam Baradouil and Till Fellrath, founders of Art ReOriented
curatorial partnership: http://new.artreoriented.com/exhibitions/tea-with-
nefertiti (Accessed July 2021)
5. Xenia Nikolskaya, “Dust: Photographing Colonial Architectural Heritage in
Egypt” (PhD diss., unpublished, University of Sutherland, 2019).
36 THE MAKING AND EXHIBITING OF DUST
Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 36
those spaces. The photographs are evocative and emotionally
charged, leaving us with the sensation that a drama has just
ended, that people have just exited the scene. Like portals to a
parallel world, they transport us into the recent past through
the constructed spaces of our modern material culture, offering
the visceral traces of untold stories.
6. Nikolskaya, “Dust: Photographing Colonial Architectural Heritage in
Egypt,” 45.
7. Xenia Nikolskaya, Precious Objects (2001–2004), https://www.
xenianikolskaya.com/3325863-precious-items-2001-04 (Accessed April
2021).
8. Samia Serageldin, The Cairo House (London: Harper Perennial, 2005).
9. The work was shown several more times in Stockholm and St. Petersburg
over the next few years: at Palkin Gallery, St. Petersburg, in 2007; at
Medelhavsmuseet in Stockholm in 2013.
10. Solo show, Dust, Townhouse Gallery, Cairo, 6 May to 13 June 2012. For
more about the exhibition and events see Alexandra Stock’s comments at
https://alexandraes.com/2012/06/30/dust-2 (Accessed July 2021)
11. “Tracing Time,” 12 May 2012, Rawabet Theater, Townhouse Gallery,
Cairo; speakers: Shaimaa Samir Ashour, Vittoria Capresi, Mohamed
Elshahed, Ola Seif, and May Al Ibrashy.
2/1/22 12:56 PM
 THE PHOTOGRAPHS

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 37 2/1/22 12:56 PM

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 38 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 1. Classroom, Prince Said Halim Palace, Cairo, 2007

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 39 2/1/22 12:56 PM

 2. Bathroom,
Baron Palace, Heliopolis,
Cairo, 2011

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 40 2/1/22 12:56 PM

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 41 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 3. Mirror,
Muhammad Kamil al-Bindari Villa,
Giza, Cairo, 2021

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 42 2/1/22 12:56 PM

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 43 2/1/22 12:56 PM
 4. Room, Palace Hotel, Minya, 2010

5. Kitchen,
Mahmoud Bassiouni
Street, Cairo, 2010

Nikolskaya_Dust Final.indd 44 2/1/22 12:56 PM

Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
 The reign of Abd-al-Rahman III. is coincident with the greatest
wealth, grandeur, and prosperity of the Hispano-Arab domination, as
those of his son and grandson indicate respectively the climax of its
intellectual supremacy and its military glory. During this, the most
flourishing era of the Saracen empire, the Peninsula presented the
aspect of a highly cultivated and extraordinarily productive garden.
The graceful and delicious plants of the Orient grew everywhere side
by side with the indigenous flora of less favored Europe. The semi-
tropical region embraced by the provinces of Valencia and Murcia,
thickly settled as they are, then supported a far more numerous
population than now clusters in their fertile valleys. The treeless and
proverbially barren steppes of Old Castile were diversified with
forests and dotted with picturesque villages. Endless fields of
ripening grain met the eye on the plains of La Mancha, where to-day
a sparse and straggling vegetation affords precarious sustenance to
the flock of the shepherd. The nature of the soil, its peculiar
adaptability to certain agricultural products, the rotation of crops, the
fertilizing qualities of all varieties of manures, the systematic
distribution and economy of water, were thoroughly understood, and
the principles of scientific husbandry applied with phenomenal
success. Not a foot of ground was wasted. The rocky hill-sides were,
with infinite labor, cut into terraces, covered with mould, and planted
with vineyards. Where even a single citron, carob, or olive-tree would
grow, a triangular enclosure was constructed of stones filled with
earth and tended with assiduous care. The yield of the harvests was
often a hundred-fold. It was not unusual, in many districts, for the
same ground to produce four crops of different kinds in the course of
a year. In the South, where the warm and genial climate assisted the
natural productiveness of the soil, the country was not inaptly termed
a terrestrial paradise. The suburbs of Cordova, Granada, and Murcia
were proverbial for their beauty, and their luxuriant vegetation was
rather suggestive of the rural surroundings of provincial hamlets than
of the vicinity of great capitals. The olive orchards of Seville were the
most extensive in the world. The banks of the Guadalquivir, near that
city, were lined with fruit-trees, and, for a distance of thirty miles, one
could travel through a succession of farm-houses, castles, and
stately villas embowered in perennial verdure. A net-work of canals,
subject to and regulated by an equitable code of laws interpreted by
rustic magistrates chosen by the people, traversed in all directions
the tillable land of every province. Gigantic aqueducts spanned
valleys and hill-sides, bearing to the parched and thirsty soil of the
distant plains the refreshing waters of the mountain springs. The
experience of the Moor enabled him to detect the presence of the
precious fluid in the most unpromising localities; and subterranean
channels, hundreds of yards in length, hewn in the living rock, still
attest his dauntless energy and perseverance.
The incessant wars and domestic feuds of the Abbasides and the
Fatimites, which consumed their resources and interrupted their
commerce, presented opportunities to the Ommeyades of Spain by
which they were ever ready to profit. The isolated situation of the
latter, and the peaceful condition of their empire for extended periods
of time, were eminently propitious to the development of foreign
trade, while the possession of a large merchant marine facilitated
transportation to points that national hostility and religious prejudice
often rendered inaccessible by land. Although the great entrepôt of
Alexandria was closed to the subjects of the Khalifs of the West, they
were amply indemnified by the hospitable reception and official
courtesies which they habitually received from the people of
Constantinople. It was a judicious and enlightened policy, and one
whose important influence on every branch of art and learning
cannot be estimated by the material prosperity, however great, which
its institution conferred, that dictated the alliance, and preserved the
close relations long existing between the princes of Moorish Spain
and the sovereigns of Byzantium. During its most prosperous era,
the merchant vessels of the khalifate numbered more than a
thousand. Permanent agencies for the purchase and sale of
merchandise were established in the most distant regions of the
East,—in Ceylon, in Sogdiana, in China. There were few bodies of
water accessible to maritime traffic where the flag of the
Ommeyades was not known.
The vaunted glories of the Abbaside dynasty were surpassed, in
many respects, by the civilization of the Hispano-Arab empire. In the
extent of its public works, in the magnificence of its palaces, in the
embellishment of its temples, the superiority of the latter can hardly
be questioned. Its thorough and systematic cultivation of the soil was
not inferior in its results to the methods pursued in the most
productive fields of Mesopotamia, the Garden of Asia. No
comparison exists between the trade of Damascus and Bagdad,
largely dependent on caravans, and that of Moorish Spain, which, in
addition to this resource, employed great fleets of merchantmen.
The best indications of the prosperity of the Western Khalifate are
to be derived from its population and its public revenues. It has been
estimated by competent authorities that the subjects of Abd-al-
Rahman III. numbered at least thirty million. Great as was the extent
of the metropolis, incredible as was her wealth, superb as were her
environs, many of the other cities of the empire, while they could not
rival her power and grandeur, shared the enormously profitable
benefits of a civilization in which Cordova enjoyed a well-deserved
pre-eminence. The dominions of the Khalif included eighty
municipalities of the first rank and three hundred of the second; the
smaller towns were almost innumerable. Along the banks of the
Guadalquivir alone stood twelve thousand villages. So thickly was
the country settled that the traveller usually passed, in the space of a
single day’s journey, no less than three large cities in the midst of an
unbroken succession of towns and hamlets. Nothing comparable
with the opulence and splendor of the great provincial capitals was to
be seen outside of the Peninsula. Seville contained five hundred
thousand inhabitants; Almeria an equal number; Granada four
hundred and twenty-five thousand; Malaga three hundred thousand;
Valencia two hundred and fifty thousand; Toledo two hundred
thousand.
The sanitary regulations maintained in these large communities
were almost perfect. The streets were paved and lighted. A thorough
system of drainage prevailed. Some of the sewers under the city of
Valencia were large enough to admit a cart with ease, and the
smallest could be traversed by a loaded beast of burden. Order was
preserved by means of a numerous and well-organized police, who
patrolled the thoroughfares day and night.
 From the best information to be obtained concerning the revenues
of Spain under the Arabs during the reigns of different monarchs, the
conclusion is indisputable that they exceeded in amount those of all
the other sovereigns of Europe combined. The data we possess,
while much less copious and explicit than could be desired, are, as
far as they go, undoubtedly correct, although some critics have
questioned their accuracy. A single instance may suffice to convey
an idea of the wealth of the khalifs under the most flourishing
conditions of their empire. The revenue of Abd-al-Rahman III. was
twelve million nine hundred and forty-five thousand dinars,
equivalent to thirty-three million six hundred thousand dollars. The
immensity of the pecuniary resources of the khalifate may well excite
the wonder, if not the incredulity, of the scholar when it is
remembered that the ratio of the respective monetary values of the
tenth and twentieth centuries is ten to one. The fact that such a sum
could be contributed for the support of government by a nation
occupying a limited territorial area like that of Spain, without being
considered onerous or in any way impairing its commercial
prosperity, is a more reliable indication of the affluence of the
Western Khalifate than a whole library of statistics. The principal tax
levied was one-tenth of the yield of the mines, crops, mercantile
investments, and industrial occupations. In addition to this was the
regular contribution, yielding fourteen million dollars, paid by
Christians and Jews as a consideration for the enjoyment of their
laws and the practice of their religion; certain taxes on shops and on
the sale of property, and duties on imports, none of which were at all
excessive. One of the most important sources of revenue, in a
warlike age, was the fifth of the booty obtained in battle, which, after
division, was deposited in the royal treasury. No approximate
computation can be made of its amount, which necessarily varied
with each campaign, and no appraisement was taken of its actual
value after its first distribution, which was, in most instances, hastily
made and inaccurate. The exigencies of warfare, and the expenses
arising from the construction of important public works, often
demanded the imposition of additional and extraordinary burdens,
which, while not countenanced by law, were usually paid without
remonstrance, as required for the propagation of the Faith and for
the completion of noble architectural monuments representing the
glory and piety of the monarch and the opulence of the state. The
dignitaries of the empire maintained the pomp and state of princes.
Their palaces, their courts, their retinues, were inferior only to those
of their royal master. No Christian potentate could vie with them in
magnificence. Their wealth, accumulated by every legal expedient,
by every device of extortion, was bestowed with lavish hand. A
present made by the Vizier, Ibn-Shobeyd, to Abd-al-Rahman III., and
celebrated by the Arab writers of the age as an instance of prodigal
generosity, bears witness of the vast treasures which must have
been possessed by imperial officials of the highest rank. It included
an estate whose forests contained twenty thousand trees; sixty
slaves, male and female, selected for their accomplishments and
beauty; one hundred horses and mules; eight hundred suits of
armor; a large number of costly weapons, tents, and trappings;
carpets, cushions, and silks; rare sables and cloaks of brocade;
quantities of camphor, aloes, musk, and amber. The most important
item of this magnificent gift was coin and virgin gold to the amount of
five hundred and fifty thousand dinars. Its whole value may be
estimated at more than five million dollars.
The political sagacity of the Moorish princes neglected no
precaution which might contribute to the consolidation of their
authority or the security of their dominions. The navy of Abd-al-
Rahman III. was the most powerful in the Mediterranean. The
irregular troops at his command were practically unlimited in number;
those regularly enrolled amounted to more than a hundred and fifty
thousand. The body-guard of the Khalif was famous for the splendor
of its arms and the perfection of its discipline. It was composed of
twelve thousand veterans, of whom eight thousand were cavalry.
The accoutrements of the members of this select corps were the
most costly and perfect that the military science of the time could
provide. Their uniform was of the finest silk. The caparisons of their
horses were unequalled in magnificence. The hilts of their scimetars
were jewelled; their belts and scabbards were of solid gold.
Facilities for rapid and secure communication with the frontiers of
the empire were afforded by substantial causeways, which, radiating
from the capital, were equally available for the passage of troops and
the transportation of merchandise. The safety of the traveller was
assured by patrols and sentinels lodged in barracks distributed at
regular intervals. A system of posts transmitted intelligence by
means of couriers and relays of horses with a rapidity that to the
mind of the astonished foreigner seemed almost magical.
Innumerable watch-towers, still known to the Spaniards by their Arab
name, atalayas, rose upon every promontory of the long extended
line of coast, and from their summits beacons flashed timely notice
of the movements of friendly cruisers and hostile squadrons.
Vast sums were repeatedly appropriated from the treasury for
structures designed for public utility, solely with the object of
affording employment to the industrious artisan and laborer. Abd-al-
Rahman II. caused proclamation to be made throughout his
dominions that no man, able and willing to work, should suffer
because of enforced idleness. Thus was established by implication
the salutary principle that the accumulated wealth of the state was
the property of the people, and to its general application is to be
attributed the extraordinary number of castles, mosques, bridges,
and aqueducts which cover every part of the Peninsula once subject
to Mussulman rule.
The sick and the unfortunate were housed and cared for in public
institutions erected for that purpose. Orphans were maintained and
educated from the private purse of the Khalif, five hundred being
enrolled in a single school at Cordova, a noble example of
patriarchal solicitude and royal generosity.
Equally unlike their predecessors the Barbarians and their own
conquerors the Castilians, the Spanish Arabs did not take pleasure
in the destruction of the proud memorials of Roman greatness. It is
true that where a structure was hopelessly ruined, they appropriated
the materials for their own edifices. Wanton injury of the relics of
classic antiquity was, however, always discountenanced by the
liberal spirit of the Spanish Moslem. Even from the earliest epoch of
their occupation, the grandeur of these works, which have
immortalized the power and majesty of the Cæsars, filled their
untutored but not unappreciative minds with awe and wonder.
Bridges and fortifications which had survived since the reign of the
first emperors were rebuilt. The highways, which formed such an
important feature of the military policy of the empire, were thoroughly
repaired and extended. Such objects of Greek or Roman art as
came into possession of the Saracens—with the exception of
statuary, which, as representing the human form, partook of the
abomination of idolatrous worship—were carefully preserved. In
every act and sentiment was disclosed a feeling of reverence and
admiration for the imposing and graceful monuments bequeathed to
posterity by the former masters of the world.
The centre of all this wonderful civilization was the famous city of
Cordova. The capital of the empire, of itself, it possessed all the
requisites of a mighty state, a vast population, commercial wealth,
religious prestige, political power. Eight cities of the first rank and
three thousand smaller towns were subject to its jurisdiction. Each
year the sum of three million pieces of gold—sixty million dollars—
was paid into its treasury. No community of ancient or mediæval
times could compare with it in proficiency in the arts, in scientific
attainments, in intellectual culture. Its inhabitants could not have
numbered less than a million. Their dwellings, generally built of
stone, exhibited the unpretending exterior peculiar to Oriental
architecture, but within they were adorned with mosaics and
arabesques, with blooming parterres and marble fountains. The
streets, adapted to the scorching climate, were narrow, but solidly
paved, perfectly drained, and, subject to constant supervision, were
kept in a state of cleanliness unknown to the best-regulated
municipalities of modern Europe. In summer, a grateful coolness was
obtained by awnings, which, stretched from one building to another,
excluded the rays of the sun, facilitating the purposes of traffic and
the intercourse of the people. The houses—exclusive of the palaces
of the nobles and public officials, which were very numerous—
amounted to the extraordinary figure of one hundred and thirteen
thousand. There were eighty thousand four hundred shops, seven
hundred mosques, nine hundred baths, and four thousand three
hundred markets, where were constantly to be seen the costumes
and the treasures of every country known to commerce in that age.
 For ten miles in a direct line on the darkest night the pedestrian
could walk securely through the city and its environs by the light of
innumerable lamps. The total area of the capital included a space of
twenty-four miles in length by six in width along the classic Bætis,
which—the only stream of Andalusia that is said to bear a strictly
Arab name—had been designated by the Saracens The Great River.
The circumference of the city proper, enclosed by fortified walls, was
fourteen miles. In the size and number of its bazaars and in the
variety of the merchandise with which its warehouses were filled,
Cordova enjoyed an undisputed pre-eminence over the most
luxurious cities of Asia, and west of the Bosphorus had no rival, with
the single exception of Constantinople.
The rarest and most expensive luxuries of the table and the
harem were to be procured in the shops of the gigantic capital.
Beautiful slaves from Greece, Italy, and Abyssinia; white eunuchs,
whose emasculation had rather enhanced than diminished their
elegance of form and regularity of feature; blacks, whose repulsive
hideousness and colossal stature were qualifications for the retinue
of the Khalif; books and manuscripts in every tongue; the choicest
spices and perfumes of the Orient; priceless jewels, whose sheen
enhances to such a degree the charms of female loveliness; robes of
every hue and texture, woven with texts and mottoes in threads of
silver and gold,—all of these, and many other wares, objects of the
cupidity and the passions of man—were daily exhibited to the
covetous and admiring glance of the passer-by. Great caravansaries
afforded shelter to multitudes of merchants, travellers, and pilgrims,
who, allured by avarice, curiosity, or devotion, daily resorted to the
renowned Metropolis of the West. Inns, where food, lodging, and
alms were gratuitously distributed to the worthy but impecunious
scholar, whose means were inadequate to the gratification of his
literary aspirations, established by the government and maintained
from the funds of the public treasury, formed a peculiar and striking
feature of the varied life of the city. From the rivulets of the distant
Sierra, a lofty aqueduct, two leagues and a half in length—and
whose vermilion hue, derived from the cinnabar in its cement,
presenting a vivid contrast to the green of the surrounding
landscape, rendered it a most conspicuous object—furnished the
inhabitants with a never-failing supply of water. Fountains threw up
their glittering spray in every square, before every palace, in the
court-yard of every mosque. In some instances, the stream poured in
noisy volume from the mouth of a lion or a crocodile of gilded
bronze, grotesque and terrible in appearance; in others, the drops
rippled gently over the edges of exquisitely carved basins of
porphyry and alabaster. The air was heavy with the mingled aroma
of myriads of blossoms, as from orchard and garden were wafted the
odors of many a delicious exotic, which filled the streets with their
intoxicating fragrance.
Seven ponderous gates, covered with scales of brass, gave
access to the five different quarters, or wards, into which the city was
divided, each of which was isolated from the rest by walls and
towers, as a means of security against the turbulent populace,
whose insubordination was proverbial and whose loyalty was
uncertain even under the iron hand of the most powerful ruler. To
one of these wards the Christians, to another the Jews, were
restricted, and, from their precincts, after sunset, no individual could
emerge without incurring the penalty of death. From every gate a
broad and well-paved highway led to the frontier cities of the empire,
—Malaga, Badajoz, Astorga, Talavera, Toledo, Saragossa, Merida.
The alcazar of the khalifs, built upon the site of the palace of the
Visigothic kings, was of great size and impregnable strength. It
probably included one of the wards above referred to, and contained
the citadel, the official residence of the principal dignitaries of the
court, and the barracks of the royal body-guard, as well as the
quarters of an innumerable retinue of dependents and slaves. Near it
was the gate leading to the bridge over the Guadalquivir, the scene
of more than one historical event which changed the fortunes of the
reigning dynasty in eras of revolution and disaster. That bridge was
one of the grandest works ever designed by Roman genius. It was
twelve hundred feet in length by thirty in breadth, and stood ninety
feet above the water. It was defended by nineteen turrets. Built
during the reign of Augustus, and in good repair to-day, it has served
the purposes of war and commerce for sixty generations.
 The inexhaustible fertility of the soil of Andalusia yielded, in the
greatest profusion, the most delicious products of every clime. The
necessaries of life were to be procured for a trifle. Every description
of food was offered for sale in the markets, and luscious fruits and
vegetables, classed as expensive luxuries or unattainable in the
capitals of Christian Europe, were enjoyed in Cordova by persons in
the most moderate circumstances. The attire of the humblest citizen
indicated an unusual degree of personal comfort; professional
mendicancy, that curse of Oriental communities, was discouraged
and practically unknown; the worthy sufferer found a ready welcome
in the public hospital, while the impostor was scourged into
unwonted activity by the officers of justice.
The suburbs of Cordova, exclusive of the royal residence of
Medina-al-Zahrâ, which was superior to the others in extent and
beauty, were twenty-one in number. They bore romantic names
suggested by their charming situations, and the admiring homage
they received from the people, such as “The Vale of Paradise,” “The
Beautiful Valley,” “The Path of Roses,” “The Garden of Wonders.”
While subject to the jurisdiction of the central municipal power, they,
in other respects, presented the aspect of a series of independent
communities, provided with every necessity and luxury required by a
numerous and thriving population,—shops, baths, inns, warehouses,
markets, and mosques. Two occupied the opposite bank of the river;
the others encircled the Moorish capital with a girdle of dazzling
white villas, interspersed with groves of palms rising amidst a wealth
of tropical verdure. For miles in every direction were orange
orchards, whose sweetness impregnated the air for many a league.
Rivulets and fountains diffused through street and garden a delicious
coolness. Blossoms of gaudy hue and overpowering fragrance grew
in profusion along the avenues. The columns in the court-yards were
entwined with roses. Along the stone causeways radiating in every
direction from the city trooped caravans of plodding camels, laden
with products of the art and industry of Europe, Africa, and Asia; or,
riding swift Andalusian horses, sped the royal couriers with
despatches for the governors of the distant states of the empire. The
majestic bridge across the Guadalquivir was, from sunrise to sunset,
crowded to its utmost capacity with traders, servants, soldiers,
mounted cavaliers, and beasts of burden.
The pampered tastes of the khalifs found their utmost gratification
in the comparative seclusion of the ten villas which the latter
possessed in the environs of their capital. Here were provided
means of sensual enjoyment that far eclipsed, in extent and
elegance, the voluptuous attractions and wanton extravagance of
Capri, Sybaris, and Antioch. These abodes of pleasure, contrived
with all the skill of the Saracen architect, were surrounded by
grounds that exhibited to perfection the peculiar and surprising
effects of the horticulture of Asia. Airy galleries, sustained by
columns of polished marble, were brilliant with the beautiful stuccoes
of Damascus. The mural decoration, imitated from the textile fabrics
of India, partook of all the richness of silk brocade interwoven with
threads of gold. The sparkling mosaics of Constantinople, lavished in
gay profusion upon arch and alcove, contributed their share towards
the embellishment of these enchanting retreats. Curious lattices of
alabaster admitted a subdued and uncertain light. Sentences from
the works of famous poets—most of them of an irreverent and
bacchanalian character—met the eye upon cornice, architrave, and
capital. The basins, wherein dashed, with musical tinkle, the jets of
countless fountains, were of massy silver. The furniture was of aloe,
sandal-wood, ebony, and ivory, delicately carved and inlaid. Lovely
female slaves of every nationality, accomplished in the arts of poetry
and music, and educated under the supervision of famous
instructors, ministered to the wants of the Commander of the
Faithful, entertained his leisure with animated and intellectual
discourse, or relieved his care with their endearments and with the
charms of song. Vast numbers of white and black eunuchs—the
former selected for their beauty, the latter prized for their lofty stature
and transcendent ugliness—glided mysteriously through the
shadowy apartments, or, armed with jewelled weapons, guarded the
forbidden portals of the harem.
In the gardens, the fertile imagination of the Oriental artist rioted in
its marvellous creations. The walks, paved with colored pebbles,
formed arabesques of quaint and varied patterns. The hedges were
fashioned into imitations of fortified walls, with battlement, tower, and
barbican. From concealed sources, fountains cast at regular
intervals their waters high into the air. Labyrinths, from whose
intricate paths escape was impossible without a guide, beset the way
of the incautious guest. The scene was diversified with lakes, upon
whose crystal surface floated swans and other water-fowl of silver;
by grottos, whose cool recesses were suggestive of luxurious
repose; by arcades of glossy evergreen; by plants of variegated
foliage whose tints, at a distance, resembled a surface of rich
enamel; by enchanting vistas, where clumps of odoriferous shrubs
and colored grasses, interspersed with beds of brilliant flowers
arranged in sentences expressing wishes for the happiness of the
monarch and the glorification of Allah, covered the landscape like a
piece of tapestry, more gorgeous than the most exquisite creations
of the weaver that ever issued from the looms of Persia or Flanders.
The oldest and one of the most famous of these villas was
Rusafah, the favorite resort of Abd-al-Rahman I. It was not merely a
place of relaxation and enjoyment, for in its garden was first
attempted the scientific cultivation of the botanical treasures of the
East. Ever devoted to the romantic traditions of his Syrian home, the
exiled prince had named his palace after one possessed by his
ancestors in the vicinity of Damascus.
The other suburban residences of the khalifs were each
distinguished by some peculiarity of location, structure, or ornament.
One was famous for its innumerable fountains. In another were
exhibited, in their greatest variety and beauty, the charming effects of
floral decoration. A third, from the magnificent view it afforded, was
called “The Abode of the Fortunate.” A profusion of mosaics and
enamels had acquired for the most ornate of all the significant and
appropriate name of “The Palace of the Diadem.”
To the northwest of Cordova, at the base of the picturesque Sierra
Morena, three miles from the city, yet connected with it by a
succession of mansions and gardens, was the palace and suburb of
Medina-al-Zahrâ. Its traditional origin partakes of the romance which
so frequently embellishes the history of the Orient. It is related by the
Moorish historians that a wealthy concubine of Abd-al-Rahman III.,
being on her death-bed and desirous that her last act should be the
fulfilment of one of the noblest obligations of her religion, requested
that the wealth she owed to the generosity of her royal lover be
expended in the ransom of Moslem captives. Anxious to comply with
this pious request, the Khalif sent messengers to the Christian states
of the North, but, even with the diligent co-operation of their princes,
who were his allies or tributaries, he was unable to find a single
slave to be redeemed from bondage. Then, at the suggestion of
another concubine, the favorite of his harem, whose name, Al-Zahrâ,
in the poetic nomenclature of the Arabs means The Blossom, he
determined to use the treasure in building a palace whose
unparalleled splendor might form a fitting climax to the glories of his
reign. A third of the public revenues, a sum which, without including
those derived from the taxes of Jews and Christians and the fifth of
the spoils of battle, amounted annually to more than two million
pieces of gold, was also devoted to the work by the enthusiastic
monarch. Ten thousand laborers and twenty-eight thousand beasts
of burden were daily employed. The minuteness and prolixity with
which are described the quantity of materials used and their value,
the nationalities of the artisans and their remuneration, as detailed
by the Arab chroniclers, are instructive though tedious, and impart an
air of veracity to a narrative which would otherwise almost transcend
belief. The plans were drawn by the most eminent architects of
Constantinople. The walls, substantially built of stone, measured
seventeen hundred by twenty-seven hundred cubits, and were
provided with all the outworks and defences of a formidable castle.
As was the case with the Great Mosque, the materials of the edifice
were collected largely from foreign sources and were put together
under the supervision of Byzantine artificers, aided by the most
skilful native workmen. Its construction was supervised by the Khalif
in person, who, in his devotion to the undertaking, having absented
himself for three successive Fridays from the services of the
Mosque, was publicly rebuked by the kadi for this flagrant neglect of
duty.
The quarries of Numidia, Greece, and Andalusia contributed
supplies of the finest marble and alabaster. Capitals of Roman origin
were furnished by the ruined temples of Narbonne, Tarragona, Utica,
and Carthage. The Byzantine emperor sent as a present to his ally a
number of columns, whose beautiful tints of green and rose called
forth the admiration of all who beheld them.
The palace was divided into three distinct sections. On the slope
of the mountain rose the magnificent alcazar, within whose
apartments were lodged the monarch and the members of his
seraglio, composed of sixty-three hundred women, with their slaves
and attendants. The number of the latter was, all told, seventeen
thousand.
Lower down, towards the city, were the quarters of the body-
guard, the eunuchs, and the pages of the court, for whose
accommodation four hundred houses were required. Next in order
came the gardens, filled with choice plants and delicious fruits, and
diversified with artificial cascades and lakes abounding in goldfish.
Within the precincts of this horticultural paradise were to be
encountered every specimen of the extensive flora—both native and
foreign—known to the accomplished botanists of Andalusia. Hedges
of myrtle, box, and laurel, trimmed in fantastic designs, separated
the broad and winding walks of rustic mosaic. Summer-houses and
shady bowers invited to the siesta after exposure to the glare and
heat of a semi-tropical sun. The prolific ingenuity of the hydraulic
engineer had exhausted itself in the wonderful distribution of streams
of water—in the varying play of a thousand fountains; in miniature
rivulets, whose tiny channels were chiselled in the balustrades of
marble staircases; in fairy grottos, over whose roofs of painted glass
the spray from revolving jets shone with kaleidoscopic effect; in
roaring cascades, from whose sombre depths were constantly visible
the iridescent hues of the rainbow. Some of the fountains were
masterpieces of the sculptor’s art. Two of them are mentioned as
being especially remarkable. The larger was of gilded bronze with
human figures elegantly carved in relief, and came from
Constantinople. The basin of the other, of green marble, was of
Syrian workmanship, and disposed about its rim were twelve
grotesque representations of animals and birds, cast in gold, and
glittering with jewels. From the mouths of these curious monsters
jets of water were projected into the basin below.
 Over the main portal of the edifice, carved in alabaster with
consummate skill, stood the effigy of the lovely slave whose
suggestion had evoked this palace of the genii, and from whom it
had received its name.
The portion of the gorgeous edifice upon which the Moorish
chronicler most delights to dwell was the central pavilion. Elevated
on a terrace of white marble, in both its exterior and interior it
afforded a dazzling example of the wealth of its owner and of the
exquisite taste of its architect.
Circular in form, its dome was supported by columns of precious
marble and rock-crystal, whose capitals were inlaid with pearls and
rubies. The walls and dome were of translucent onyx; the roof of
gold and silver tiles, placed in alternate rows. The spandrels and the
inscriptions of the frieze exhibited the imperishable tints and jewelled
play of Byzantine mosaic. Doors of odoriferous woods inlaid with
ivory, ebony, and gold, enriched with gems of great value, gave
access to this magnificent apartment. Under the centre of the dome
stood a movable basin of porphyry filled with quicksilver. In some
manner, probably by the use of mirrors, the rays of the sun could be
concentrated upon the metal and the basin caused to rotate rapidly
by hidden mechanism, casting blinding flashes of light in every
direction; dazzling the beholders with the intolerable glare, and
striking with amazement and terror the ambassadors of foreign
powers, for whose benefit this ingenious contrivance, which would
seem rather to belong to the stage than to the audience-chamber of
a powerful monarch, was repeatedly exhibited.
The hall of this pavilion was the scene of many of the most
imposing ceremonies and remarkable events in the history of the
khalifate. Here, the heir to the crown was publicly acknowledged and
invested with his dignity. Here, the princes of the blood, the
magnates of the realm, the heads of departments, the governors of
provinces, assembled after the death of the sovereign to swear
allegiance to his successor. Here, also, the envoys of the
monarchies of Europe and the East were granted an audience under
circumstances far exceeding in splendor the boasted pomp of
Constantinople, Aix-la-Chapelle, and Bagdad. Under this translucent
and glittering dome were received the Kings of Leon and Navarre,
suppliants for the favor and alliance of the hereditary enemy of their
people and their faith. On these occasions was displayed all the
ostentatious magnificence of which the most brilliant court in Europe
was capable. The decorations of the audience-chamber—already
unparalleled in richness—were heightened with silken carpets and
hangings of cloth of silver. The Khalif, seated on a throne blazing
with diamonds, rubies, and emeralds, was surrounded by his family
and his courtiers attired in their robes of state. About the pavilion and
around the terrace was marshalled the royal guard, unrivalled in the
elegance of its appointments by any similar body of soldiers in the
world. The white robes of the eunuchs and slaves formed an
appropriate background to the gorgeous picture, which imparted to
the bewildered barbarians of the German forests and the Pyrenean
mountains a startling impression of the civilization and resources of
the detested infidel.
The mosque of Medina-al-Zahrâ corresponded in its general
details with the palace, for the convenience of whose occupants it
was erected. In some respects, it surpassed in the elegance of its
ornamentation the great temple of the capital, after whose plan it
was modelled. It contained five aisles; its gilding and mosaics
exhibited the finished labors of the Asiatic artist; its sanctuary and
pulpit were marvels of Oriental taste and skill. A minaret of polished
stone, ten cubits square and forty in height and covered with
arabesques in relief, surmounted the graceful edifice. The court was
paved with wine-colored marble, and provided with a fountain
elaborately carved and gilded.
From a royal villa, Medina-al-Zahrâ insensibly expanded into a
miniature city. Around the palace clustered the luxurious dwellings of
the courtiers, the merchants, and the officers of the army. The
avenues were lined with trees, whose foliage formed a continuous
arch. Not a house could be seen that was not embosomed in
gardens abounding with gushing waters and rare exotics. Even the
sides of the Sierra had been stripped of the sombre growth of
evergreens which had originally covered them, and, planted with fig-
and almond-trees, appeared in all the beauty of luxuriant foliage and
fragrant blossoms. Not far away, extensive plantations of the
sweetest of flowers gave to the locality the name of Gebal-al-Wardat,
The Mountain of the Rose.
Three hundred baths, exclusive of those appropriated to the use
of the imperial household, contributed to the health and the
ceremonial purity of the inhabitants. The favorite residence of the
khalifs, Medina-al-Zahrâ became the seat of the muses, the home of
the arts, the centre of the intellectual society of the empire.
Institutions of learning sprang up within its borders. The literary
contests which constituted an unique and prominent feature of the
Andalusian court were celebrated there in the presence of the
monarch and the companions of his greatness and his leisure. Forty
years were required for its construction, twenty-five under Abd-al-
Rahman and fifteen under his son Al-Hakem. Its cost represents, at
a modern valuation, the enormous sum of one hundred and fifty
million dollars. Experienced travellers of every nation pronounced,
without a dissenting voice, that the world did not possess, in point of
picturesque situation, royal magnificence, and architectural beauty, a
rival of the incomparable city and palace of Medina-al-Zahrâ.
It is difficult to conceive, from their present forlorn and deserted
condition, of the aspect once presented by the environs of imperial
Cordova. Independent of its populous suburbs, the commercial
tributaries of the capital represented vast mercantile interests, and
furnished support to multitudes of industrious artisans. Five thousand
mills lined the banks of the rapid Guadalquivir. Encouraged by the
profit derived from a regular and extensive trade with foreign nations,
manufacturing establishments had sprung up in every city of
importance. Each of these towns had its mosques and its imams,
who, in addition to their ecclesiastical duties, discharged the
functions of magistrates and reported regularly to the authorities of
the capital.
In the patronage of letters, Abd-al-Rahman III. was in no respect
inferior to any of his most liberal predecessors. He himself excelled
in improvisation, that talent so highly prized by his countrymen. His
fame and his munificence allured to the court of Cordova the most
accomplished scholars from every region of the world. The capital
abounded with colleges, academies, lyceums, and other educational
foundations. The medical profession had attained to a high standard
of excellence, and the Jewish surgeons of Cordova were universally
recognized as unrivalled in the extent and variety of their knowledge.
Many physicians held important employments under the
government, deserved tributes to their skill; but such was their
charity that the doors of even the most distinguished of them were
always open to the poor, and their gratuitous ministrations at the
service of the most humble sufferer. The sciences of astronomy and
chemistry, based upon observations at Bagdad and experiments at
Cairo and Damascus, had made an unprecedented advance. In the
royal alcazar, in the palaces of princes, in the mansions of the rich, in
the homes of the learned, the mind of the seeker after knowledge
was daily exercised by the discussion of subjects of universal
interest, by the prosecution of scientific inquiry, by lectures, by
improvisations, by the spirited contests of poets for literary
supremacy. In every calling and profession, in every position of life,
the useful and the ornamental arts, the noble and elegant pursuits of
literature were cultivated by both sexes with an ardor akin to
enthusiasm.
The name of Abd-al-Rahman III., glorious in the annals of Moorish
Spain, has not, however, escaped the condemnation of history. His
great deeds; his triumphs in war and diplomacy; his skill in the
reconciliation of adverse factions; his generous clemency; his
encouragement of letters, may well be the subject of extravagant
eulogy. But the sensual passions of his nature bordered upon
insanity; and his character was defiled by that nameless and
unnatural vice which, practised and even defended by one of the
most famous of the Greek philosophers, has from the earliest times
been the blemish and the reproach of Oriental civilization.
The infirmities of age and the irksomeness of satiety embittered
the declining years of the Khalif. He virtually abandoned the
administration of the empire to his heir, Al-Hakem. Renouncing the
gay frivolities of the court, he attached himself to a fanatic named
Abu-Ayub, whose ascetic manners and ostentatious poverty were
received by the vulgar as evidences of extraordinary sanctity. In the
society of this singular companion he passed much of his time in
fasting, in prayer, in the distribution of alms. After his death, in a
journal which recorded his most secret thoughts, were found the
following significant reflections on the disappointments of life and the
delusive attractions of human greatness and imperial ambition. “I
have reigned fifty years in peace and in glory, beloved by my people,
feared by my enemies, respected by my allies. My friendship has
been sought by the great kings of the earth. I have wanted nothing
that the heart of man could desire,—neither renown, nor power, nor
pleasure. During this long life, I have counted the days when I have
enjoyed complete happiness—and they amount to only fourteen!
Praise be to Him who alone possesses eternal glory and
omnipotence, there is no other God than He!”