SCA head tours historic Cairo, demands clean-up

Ahram Online (Nevine El-Aref)

Antiquities czar visits Old Cairo's recently-restored Al-Muizz Street only to find that chaos still reigns

Moustafa Amine, secretary-general of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, took an unscheduled tour of Old Cairo’s historic Al-Muizz Street on Wednesday to inspect the street’s recently-restored Islamic monuments.

During his tour, Amine was reportedly angered to find that the area had been largely taken over by street peddlers and fruit vendors. Amine also found that the street was being used as a shortcut for automobiles, turning the courtyards of the area’s Fatimid and Ottoman mosques into parking lots.

The court in front of the Ibn Barquq Mosque, for example, had been transformed into a food court where wooden hand carts laden with koshari, hummus, liver and brains serve local patrons.