A necropolis several kilometres long where Mamluk sultans are buried and living families have made homes among the tombs.
The Qarafa runs several kilometres along the eastern edge of Cairo below the Mokattam hills, and it has been the city’s burial ground since the Arab conquest in the seventh century. Within it are some of the finest Mamluk funerary architecture anywhere — domed mausolea, khanqahs, madrasas, whole complexes built by sultans for themselves.
The Northern Cemetery holds the best of it: the Sultan Qaytbay complex of 1474, whose carved stone dome is on the Egyptian one-pound note and is one of the masterpieces of Islamic architecture; the Khanqah of Faraj ibn Barquq with its twin domes; and the tombs of Barsbay and others.
The living
Egyptian funerary practice built enclosures around graves so that families could visit and stay, and those enclosures have rooms. Over centuries, and particularly as Cairo’s population grew and housing failed to keep up, people moved into them.
Estimates of how many live in the cemeteries vary enormously — figures from tens of thousands to half a million circulate, and none is reliable. What is certain is that there are streets, shops, schools, electricity and water in parts of it, and that families have lived in the same tomb enclosures for generations.
The popular framing — the poor of Cairo living in graveyards — is not quite right. It is a district, with a social structure, and many residents are not destitute. It is also genuinely poor in parts, and it has a reputation within Cairo that residents resent.
The demolitions
Since 2020 substantial parts of the cemeteries have been demolished to build highways and bridges as part of the road programme linking the New Administrative Capital. Historic tombs, including some of considerable importance, have been destroyed or relocated, and there has been sustained protest from Egyptian conservationists, historians and residents.
Some monuments have been protected after campaigns. Others have gone. What you can see has changed and is still changing.
Visiting
Go with a guide. Not primarily for safety — although the area is confusing and some parts are not welcoming to unaccompanied visitors — but because a local guide makes the difference between intruding and being received. Several Cairo-based operators and NGOs run walks that pay guides from the district.
Do not photograph people or homes without asking. This is somebody’s street.
Dress conservatively. Go in the morning. Avoid Fridays, when families visit graves.
Nearby
Al-Azhar Park overlooks the northern cemetery from the other side of the Ayyubid wall, and the view from its terraces over the domes at sunset is the easiest way to see the necropolis without entering it.
More History
Al-Muizz Street
A kilometre of medieval Cairo with the densest concentration of Islamic architecture in the world, pedestrianised and lit at night.
Coptic Cairo
A walled compound inside a Roman fortress holding a church on stilts, a synagogue, and a crypt where the Holy Family is said to have sheltered.