De l´Afrique Caire

Title

De l´Afrique Caire

Description

Bird's eye view of the city of Cairo with the pyramids. In the foreground, travellers on horses and camels.

ca. 1683

Artist

Mallet (1630-1706)

Alain Manesson Mallet (1630- 1706 ) was a French cartographer and engineer. He started his career as a soldier in the army of Louis XIV, became a Sergeant-Major in the artillery and an Inspector of Fortifications. He also served under the King of Portugal, before returning to France, and his appointment to the court of Louis XIV. His military engineering and mathematical background led to his position teaching mathematics at court. His major publications were Description de L'Univers (1683) in 5 volumes, and Les Travaux de Mars ou l'Art de la Guerre (1684) in 3 volumes. His Description de L'Universe contains a wide variety of information, including star maps, maps of the ancient and modern world, and a synopsis of the customs, religion and government of the many nations included in his text. It has been suggested that his background as a teacher led to his being concerned with entertaining his readers. This concern manifested itself in the charming harbor scenes and rural landscapes that he included beneath his description of astronomical concepts and diagrams. Mallet himself drew most of the figures that were engraved for this book.

Historical Description

Cairo's significance really changed in the 19th century with the emergence of the Khedive Empire. Ismail Pasha, who ruled between 1863 and 1879, had numerous buildings erected in the city and took the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 as an opportunity to present Cairo to the European powers as a flourishing metropolis. However, most of the development was financed by foreign loans, which increased Britain's influence in particular. During the reign of Ismail Pasha, Cairo, which now became the capital again, expanded westwards across the Nile. European architects were commissioned to renovate the city, the residential districts of Zamalek and Muhandisin were built, but large parts of today's city center also date from this period. As Egypt's industrialization accelerated, the country's capital continued to grow. By the end of the 19th century, Egypt's foreign debt and the weakness of the Ottoman Empire resulted in growing European influence in Cairo. With the occupation of Egypt by British troops and the crushing of the Urabi movement (1881-1882), Great Britain took control of the country without ending its formal affiliation with the Ottoman Empire. The Khediv of Egypt remained formally a vassal of the Ottomans. The Urabi movement emerged in the fall of 1881 when, following the financial ruin of Egypt under Ismail Pasha, the country came under international financial control. The movement opposed this international control of financial and economic policy and the autocratic rule of the Muhammad Ali dynasty.