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This vast landscaping and urban renewal project has also uncovered Saladin's walls. An enormous rubbish heap in the centre of Cairo, has been turned into a park thanks to the Aga Khan, Imam of the Shia Imami Ismaili Muslim, and it is to be inaugurated this month. He is well known for his interest in the architecture of Islam, and this is an exceptionally ambitious project by the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC) that has involved also restoring parts of the ancient city walls, the Darb al-Ahmar area in a socially responsible way.
Al-Azhar Park is an entirely new, 30-hectare green space created in the heart of the medieval city on what has been the rubbish heap of Cairo since late Mamluk times: 500 years of rubble, 45-metres deep or more, the layered sediment of Cairo's life and past. From the rolling green hills of this location today, one monument stands out against the skyline, framed in the windows of Al-Azhar Park's new restaurants, aligned with the main axis of the Park: the Citadel. Between 1176 and 1183, Salah al-Din (Saladin, 1171-93), the founder of the Sunni Ayyubid dynasty, fortified the area to protect it against attacks by the Crusaders, and since then, it has never been without a military garrison.
Al-Azhar Park offers a view of Cairo almost as dominant as that of the Citadel itself and from its high points one has to look almost directly down to see partially unearthed remnants of the Ayyubid city wall, restored by the AKTC. This wall was in part the work of Salah al-Din and it marked the eastern limit of the city. From these hills too, the visitor can clearly see the mosque and madrasa (Koranic school) built for Sultan Hassan bin Mohammad bin Qala'oun in 1356. Closer by still, north of the Citadel and near the Bab Zuwayla stands the Aqsunqur or Blue Mosque, built by one of al-Nasir Muhammad's Emirs, Shams ad-Din Aqsunqur, in 1346. Close to the limits of the park a minaret recently restored by the AKTC marks the site of an unusual complex, erected first as a mausoleum by the Mamluk prince Khayrbek in 1502. Left standing empty for decades before the recent restoration work, the Khayrbek mosque is considered an important example of the Mamluk-Ottoman transition.
Despite this location close to the wellsprings of the history of Cairo, it was a daring gesture to decide to build on top of more than five centuries of rubbish. The very nature of this accumulation was a challenge to any construction or to the growth of plants. And yet, almost more than any monument, the debris of the great city is the proof of its life