Before Cairo
Memphis, twenty kilometres south, was the capital of Old Kingdom Egypt from around 3100 BC, and the pyramids at Giza, Saqqara and Dahshur are its cemeteries. Heliopolis, to the north-east, was the great centre of sun worship.
Cairo itself did not exist. What stood on its site was the Roman fortress of Babylon, built around 300 AD to control the junction of the Nile and a canal to the Red Sea.
The Islamic foundations
641 — Amr ibn al-As takes Egypt and founds Fustat beside the fortress. It is the capital for three centuries and becomes a large, prosperous city.
868 — Ahmad ibn Tulun founds al-Qata’i and builds his mosque, which still stands.
969 — The Fatimids, Isma’ili Shia from North Africa, conquer Egypt and found the walled royal city of al-Qahira. Al-Azhar is built in 970 and teaching begins in 975.
1168 — Fustat is deliberately burned to deny it to the Crusaders.
1171 — Saladin ends the Fatimid caliphate, restores Sunni Islam, opens the royal city to the public and begins the Citadel.
The Mamluks, 1250–1517
Slave soldiers seize power and hold it for two and a half centuries. Cairo becomes the largest city west of China and the centre of the Islamic world after the Mongols destroy Baghdad in 1258.
The Black Death in 1348 kills perhaps a third of Egypt’s population. Most of the great architecture of Islamic Cairo dates from this period.
Ottoman and French
1517 — Selim I takes Egypt; Cairo becomes a provincial capital and declines relatively.
1798 — Napoleon invades, wins at the Battle of the Pyramids, and brings 167 scholars whose Description de l’Égypte founds Egyptology. Nelson destroys the French fleet at Aboukir; the expedition leaves in 1801.
Muhammad Ali and the Khedives
1805 — Muhammad Ali, an Albanian officer, takes power and rules until 1848, building a modern army, industry and state. In 1811 he massacres the Mamluk leadership at the Citadel.
1869 — the Suez Canal opens. Khedive Ismail builds Downtown as a European city and bankrupts Egypt doing it.
1882 — Britain occupies Egypt after the Urabi revolt, and stays, in one form or another, for seventy years.
Independence and republic
1919 — a nationwide revolution against British rule. 1922 — nominal independence under a monarchy.
1952 — the Free Officers depose King Farouk. Nasser takes power, nationalises the Suez Canal in 1956, and provokes the Suez Crisis.
1967 — catastrophic defeat by Israel. 1973 — the October War restores some of the loss. Sadat makes peace with Israel in 1979 and is assassinated in 1981. Mubarak rules for thirty years.
2011 and since
25 January 2011 — mass protests centred on Tahrir Square force Mubarak out after eighteen days. Mohamed Morsi is elected in 2012 and removed by the military in 2013; Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has governed since.
Since 2015 the state has been building a New Administrative Capital in the desert east of the city, and a road and bridge programme has cut through historic districts including parts of the City of the Dead.