This post in 2019 showed the image below, in which American paving machines arrived in Cairo, organized by the so-called Tanzim office. We promised a little introduction into the history of the bureaucratic organization of urban planning in nineteenth-century Cairo. The subject is missing its monographer but a short summary is in order, based on our research and recently published monographs .
The governor Mehmed Ali (r. 1805-1848) established various departments for the urban administration of Cairo. There was an office called Diwan al-Farda wa-Ashghal al-Mahrusa in the 1820s and 1830s (for instance, WM, 9 Oct 1829, 1). Sometimes this is mentioned as one diwan, sometimes as two distinct diwans. Ashghal al-Mahrusa might have been the main institution in the 1830s. In 1844, the government established a committee called Majlis Tanzim al-Mahrusa (Commission of Cairo’s Planning/Reorganization) although it is unclear how long this committee worked. In the mid-1850s the government established the Governorate of Cairo (Muhafazat Misr), under which a Tanzim office with Egyptian engineers functioned; in 1859 an ordinance for street planning was issued and many other urban hygiene decrees; the Privy Council issued a regulation in 1866 about setting up similar urban planning offices in other Egyptian cities (Fahmy, In Quest of Justice, Chapter 3). According to an 1868 suggestion of ‘Ali Mubarak, the Cairo Tanzim office came under the jurisdiction of his Ministry of Public Works (Nizarat al-Ashghal al-‘Umumiyya, established in 1864). During the British occupation, until 1914, the urban planning office of Cairo remained under the Ministry of Public Works simply referred to as Tanzim (in French, Administration de la Voirie). European observers often complained about the “dictatorship” of the Tanzim offices over urban public spaces.
Illustration: Tanzim urban planning map, DWQ.
This office of experts performed the major engineering work of creating khedivial Cairo from the 1850s. The employees were Egyptian engineers and workers. The directors were first Egyptian and, from 1873, European (French) engineers. The most famous one is Pierre Grand Bey (d. 1918). Khedive Ismail employed Pierre Grand as civil engineer in 1870, and he participated in the architectural design of the khedivial theatres in Cairo and in their maintenance in the early 1870s. He became director of the Cairo Tanzim on 10 March 1873 (DWQ). He is most known by the map of Cairo, prepared under his supervision in 1874. After 1880, Grand, as the director-general of Tanzim, became a member of various urban planning committees, including the Committee for Theatres and the Committee for the Conservation of Monuments in Cairo. He retired from the Tanzim office in 1897.
The next director of the Tanzim was the French engineer/architect Jean-Baptiste Chiarisoli Bey (d. 1927), who returned to France in 1899. He was succeeded by Hilaire Reboul, an engineer originally from the Sanitary Service, who appears to remain the director until 1914 at least. In the late 1890s, the Cairo Tanzim with the other countryside Tanzim offices became subordinated inspectorate offices in the Ministry of Public Works, under the Service des Villes et Bâtimants de l’Etat. Importantly, after 1908 the countryside urban Tanzim offices were under the Ministry of Interior, and only the Cairo and the Canal zone cities’ Tanzim offices remained under the Ministry of Public Works (Code administratif, 366). In 1902, Said Bey Shukri and a certain Schauffelle distinguished themselves when the Tanzim set up quick public water taps against cholera. In the 1920s, Ahmad ‘Umar Bey became the director. A comprehensive history of the Tanzim offices in Cairo and in the countryside remains to be written.
Illustration: Tanzim’s map to represent Cairo’s development, M. Karkègi Papers, uncatalogued, BnF.
Sources:
Al-Waqa’i‘ al-Misriyya
DWQ, Muhafazat Misr
BnF, M. Karkègi Papers
A. Rhoné, « Nouvelles d’Égypte, » La Chronique des arts et de la curiosité: supplément à la Gazette des beaux-arts, 17 February 1883, 51-53.
Ghislaine Alleaume, “Politiques urbaines et contrôle de l’entreprise: une loi inédite de ʿAlī Mubārak sur les corporations du bâtiment,” Annales Islamologiques, 21 (1985): 147-188.
André Raymond, Le Caire. [Paris]: Fayard, 1993.
Mercedes Volait, Architectes et architectures de l’Égypte moderne 1830–1950—Genèse et essor d’une expertise locale. Paris: Maisonneuve et Larose, 2005.
Adam Mestyan, Arab Patriotism : The Ideology and Culture of Power in Late Ottoman Egypt. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2017.
Khaled Fahmy, In Quest of Justice : Islamic Law and Forensic Medicine in Modern Egypt. Oakland, California: University of California Press, 2018.
(A.M. – M.V.)
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