e name of Misr, or Masr, which is applied to it by the
modern Egyptians. With its rise Fost[=a]t, which had been little affected
by the establishment of Askar and Katai, declined. It continually increased
so as to include the site of El-Katai to the south. In A.D. 1176 Cairo was
unsuccessfully attacked by the Crusaders; shortly afterwards Saladin built
the citadel on the lowest point of the mountains to the east, which
immediately overlooked El-Katai, and he partly walled round the towns and
large gardens within the space now called Cairo. Under the prosperous rule
of the Mameluke sultans this great tract was filled with habitations; a
large suburb to the north, the Hoseynia, was added; and the town of Bulak
was founded. After the Turkish conquest (A.D. 1517) the metropolis decayed,
but its limits were the same. In 1798 the city was captured by the French,
who were driven out in 1801 by the Turkish and English forces, the city
being handed over to the Turks. Mehemet Ali, originally the Turkish
viceroy, by his massacre of the Mamelukes in 1811, in a narrow street
leading to the citadel, made himself master of the country, and Cairo again
became the capital of a virtually independent kingdom. Under Mehemet and
his successors all the western part of the city has grown up. The khedive
Ismail, in making the straight road from the citadel to the Ezbekia
gardens, destroyed many of the finest houses of the old town. In 1882 Cairo
was occupied by the British, and British troops continue to garrison the
citadel.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--S.L. Poole, _The Story of Cairo_ (London, 1902), a
historical and architectural survey of the Moslem city; E. Reynolds-Ball,
_Cairo: the City of the Caliphs_ (Boston, U.S.A., 1897); Prisse d'Avennes,
_L'Art arabe d'apres les monuments du Caire_ (Paris, 1847); P. Ravaisse,
_L'Histoire et la topographie du Caire d'apres Makrizi_ (Paris, 1887); E.W.
Lane, _Cairo Fifty Years Ago_ (London, 1896), presents a picture of the
city as it was before the era of European "improvements," and gives
extracts from the _Khitat_ of Maqrizi, written in 1417, the chief original
authority on the antiquities of Cairo; Murray's and Baedeker's _Guides_,
and A. and C. Black's _Cairo of To-day_ (1905), contain much useful and
accurate information about Cairo. For the fortress of Babylon and its
churches consult A.J. Butler, _Ancient Coptic Churches in Egypt_ (Oxford,
1884).

CAIRO, a city and the county-seat of Alexander county, Ill