Four stops before the checkout

Cairo, Egypt

cardio tennis to help with anxiety — Citadel of Saladin and the Mosque of Muhammad Ali in Cairo, A hilltop fortress of tawny limestone walls and round towers crowned by a silver-grey domed mosque with two exceptionally tall thin pencil minarets, overlooking a hazy city of minarets below

Stop one

Mosque of Ibn Tulun

Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet: I have found something. Six acres of it, in the middle of a capital city, and I cannot think why more is not made of it. Ahmad ibn Tulun, the Abbasid governor who made Egypt effectively independent, built this between 876 and 879, and it is the oldest mosque in Cairo surviving substantially in its original form: fired brick and stucco throughout, not a scavenged column anywhere. The minaret with the spiral stair on the outside is generally thought to echo the great minaret of Samarra, the Abbasid capital where Ibn Tulun was raised. And look at those arcades: pointed arches, centuries before European Gothic arrived at them. Long neglected, used as a shelter and even a wool store, restored from the late nineteenth century on.

Stop two

Al-Azhar Mosque

Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet: Now this I suspect is a significant find: a university that has simply never stopped. Founded in 970 by the Fatimid general Jawhar as the congregational mosque of the newly built city of Cairo, with teaching under way within a few years, which makes it one of the oldest continuously operating universities in the world. Under the Fatimids it taught Ismaili Shia doctrine; after Saladin's conquest in 1171 it was reoriented to Sunni scholarship, and it is now the most influential centre of Sunni learning globally, its Grand Imam among the most senior authorities in Sunni Islam. Ruler after ruler added to the fabric, and the minarets record the Mamluk and Ottoman phases, including Qansuh al-Ghuri's twin-finialed one. Word of this ought to get out.

cardio tennis to help with anxiety — Mosque of Ibn Tulun in Cairo, An enormous austere mosque of plain brick coated in stucco, with a huge empty courtyard, arcades of piers carrying pointed arches, and a spiral minaret with an external staircase winding around it

Stop three

Citadel of Saladin

Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet: Up on the Muqattam spur, and I do believe I am the first to remark on this view. Saladin began the Citadel in 1176 to defend Cairo against the Crusaders, and it remained the seat of Egyptian government for some seven hundred years, through Ayyubid, Mamluk, Ottoman and Muhammad Ali's rule. The great dome and twin needle minarets belong to the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, built between 1830 and 1848 in a deliberately Ottoman idiom and faced in alabaster from Beni Suef. It was here in 1811 that Muhammad Ali secured his power by massacring the Mamluk beys after a banquet, at a narrow passage still pointed out to visitors. The Mamluk mosque of al-Nasir Muhammad stands here too, with several military museums.

cardio tennis to help with anxiety — Khan el-Khalili in Cairo, A dense warren of narrow covered lanes under stone arches, packed with stalls of hanging brass lanterns, glass, spices and textiles, with an ornate old stone gateway and carved wooden balconies overhead

Stop four

Hanging Church

Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet: A church balanced on a Roman gate, and I very nearly walked past it. The nave is suspended over the southern gate of the fortress of Babylon on palm-log and stone supports, which is exactly how it got the name. A church has stood on this spot since perhaps the third or fourth century, though the present structure is largely ninth-century and later and much rebuilt, and after the see moved from Alexandria to Cairo it long served as the residence of the Coptic patriarch. Inside: a wooden ceiling shaped to recall Noah's ark, thirteen pillars said to represent Christ and the apostles, screens of ebony inlaid with ivory. Still an active parish church. Remarkable. Do tell people.

The Cairo, Egypt track

Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet

Written for this world alone.

Good evening. Name on the list? Excellent — come through, and mind the rope. I am the Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition, and I have standards. Graphite frame, 102 square inch head, open 16×19 string pattern, supplied pre-strung, dressed in the official Wimbledon livery. Purple and green. Very correct. I have turned people away for less.

I am admitted everywhere from a Sunday club ladder to a first proper tournament, and I am also perfect for a player who intends to be seen arriving in Cairo.

Tonight, however, the door is open.

We begin high up, on a spur of the Muqattam hills, at the Citadel of Saladin — begun under Salah al-Din as a fortified seat of government and the centre of Egyptian rule for many centuries after, with palaces, gates and walls added by one dynasty after another.

Its crown now is the Mosque of Muhammad Ali: Ottoman in style, a great central dome with cascading half-domes, two exceptionally tall thin pencil minarets, circles of glass lamps hung inside, and a clock in the courtyard given by the king of France. From up here the whole hazy city of minarets lies out below you.

Then Al-Azhar, founded in 970 by the Fatimid general Jawhar as the congregational mosque of a newly built city, with teaching under way within a few years — which makes its university one of the oldest continuously operating anywhere in the world.

It taught Ismaili Shia doctrine under the Fatimids and was reoriented to Sunni scholarship after Saladin's conquest in 1171, and its minarets record the Mamluk and Ottoman phases one above the other, including the twin-finialed minaret of Qansuh al-Ghuri. Different management, same address, no scene at the door. Admirable.

Then the Mosque of Ibn Tulun, built between 876 and 879 by the Abbasid governor who made Egypt effectively independent, and the oldest mosque in the city surviving substantially as it was built: fired brick and stucco rather than reused columns, over six acres of it laid out around an immense empty courtyard, and a minaret wrapped in an external spiral staircase generally thought to echo the great minaret of Samarra.

The pointed arches of its arcades predate their appearance in European Gothic by centuries. It has been neglected, used as a shelter, used as a wool store, and restored from the late nineteenth century onward.

And we close in Khan el-Khalili, the principal historic bazaar, established when a Mamluk emir built a caravanserai on a Fatimid burial ground and expanded by later rulers into a whole commercial quarter.

Its narrow covered lanes are organised loosely by trade — goldsmiths, coppersmiths, spice merchants, perfumers, textile sellers — with original stone gateways and khan buildings still standing among the shops, and El Fishawy has been pouring coffee in there for generations.

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Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet

Babolat Boost Wimbledon Limited Edition Tennis Racquet