This picture is an aerial photograph, perhaps the first one, of Cairo. It was taken by the famous Swiss balloon-pilot, Edouard Spelterini (d. 1932), allegedly in 1902. Aerial photography of Middle Eastern cities and the countryside will be an important feature of the interwar period for military and archeological (often intertwined) reasons. Apart from the first of its genre, this picture is a very informative image about the boundaries of Cairo. Let us focus here on a small detail: the so-called British Army Barracks which occupy the lower half of the image, next to the Qasr al-Nil Bridge. Usually, these barracks are mentioned as part of the history of Tahrir Square (Owen 1997-98), a topic especially popular after 2011, or as part of American plans to redesign the neighboring Egyptian Museum. However, let us consider the barracks on their own “merit.”

 

Image source: J.P. Getty Museum, 84.XB.1233.8

The so-called “British” barracks were not British in their origin. The above picture is the earliest known image from 1862. Said Pasha (r. 1854-1863) built these barracks to house Egyptian-Ottoman army units in the late 1850s (Mubarak, I: 83; Abu-Lughod, 105, 141). They were so associated with pasha’s army that the great urban chronicler ‘Ali Mubarak uses the Ottoman Turkish word kışlak/kışlagh (قشلاق, barracks) to describe these buildings even though his book was published after the 1882 British occupation (his team worked on the book in the 1870s). Said ordered to destroy the original Qasr al-Nil, an elegant palace, to build the barracks but seemingly a smaller part of that palace remained to house the army leadership and possibly himself. Why did Said put army units in this place which was quite empty and far from the city center? A proper answer needs proper research but we can provide some hints here.

 

Grand Bey Map detail

The origin of the barracks does not appear to be the policing of Cairo, as so many argue, since “the city” was quite far from the Nile in the 1850s-60s. Rather, Said was obsessed with his army. The highest military headquarters was the Citadel of Cairo which were accompanied by several training camps during Mehmed Ali pasha’s rule. Abbas Hilmi (r. 1849-1854) attempted to create a new military center in ‘Abbasiya. After his death a short but crucial power struggle occurred in 1854 when army leaders, loyal to Abbas’ son Ilhami, denied Said’s succession and closed the Citadel (Toledano, 47). Is it possible that Said decided to move the military, or at least Abbas’ troops, to these new barracks as a result of this episode? Or, was his reason to create a super secure residence, protected from a potential attack from the Citadel, with easy exit from Cairo? As one can see in the above map detail, what we can call the “Qasr al-Nil territory” was a large plot, completely protected by the Nile and the barracks, with its own bath and port.

Map: WO 78/152 (1884), The National Archives, Kew, UK (courtesy of Juliette Desplat).

In 1882-83, the occupying British army units took over the Egyptian army barracks. Sapper J. Tomlison, Royal Engineers, created the above map of the army stables in 1884, today in The National Archives, Kew. In general, the occupation redesigned the military infrastructure of Cairo: the British troops in the barracks answered to the British commander-in-chief and the British Consul-General (later High Commissioner, again later Ambassador), not to the pasha.  From the 1910s there are numerous official and private photographs of British imperial units in the “Kasr-El-Nil” barracks as the soldiers called these buildings (for instance, this one). In the interwar period the barracks served as the main British center of military occupation, emanating fear and providing ground for imperial ceremonies in front of the buildings. Only in 1948 did the British army evacuate the barracks and King Faruq (r. 1936-1952) ordered to destroy the buildings to start a new chapter in this urban area.

Memorial service of King George V, Kasr-El-Nil Barracks, Cairo, 1936. Source: Wellcome Library, Army Medical Services Museum, RAMC/801/22/23/26.

Sources: ‘Ali Mubarak, al-Khitat al-Tawfiqiyya (Bulaq: al-Matba‘a al-Kubra, 1306), 1 :83 ;  Abu-Lughod, Cairo: 1001 Years, 105,141;  Roger Owen, “The Metamorphosis of Cairo’s Midan al-Tahrir as Public Space: 1870-1970,” Harvard Middle Eastern and Islamic Review 4/1-2 (1997-98), 138-162; Ehud Toledano, State and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Egypt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 47, and links in the text. (A.M.)