Essam Azzam street, in old Arabic reads ‘Shariʻa al-Muizz li-Deen Illah’ is one of the oldest streets in Cairo Egypt and approximately one kilometre long. A study by the United Nations discovered it to have the greatest concentration of medieval architectural treasures in the Islamic world
Location:
Situated about 30 minutes from Downtown Cairo and in the heart of the Old Islamic Cairo area, it is one of the most popular sites for history related to the Islamic advancement in Egypt.
History:
The street of Al Muizz stretches from Bab Al-Futuh in the north to Bab Zuweila in the south. Now considered an’ open air museum’, it was ordered on April 24, 2008 that Al-Muizz Street dedicated as a pedestrian only zone between 8:00 am and 11:00 pm.
Al muizz street crosses the Muski 200m west of Midan El-Hussein, at a crossroads with two Mosques. Heading north from there, jewellery shops overflowing from the Goldsmiths Bazaar soon give way to vendors of posts, basins and crescent topped finials, after whom this part of the street is popularly called Al-Nahaseen, the Coppersmiths Bazaar. In Fatimid times this Bazaar was a broad avenue culminating in a great parade ground between caliphal palaces hence the name Bayn al Qasrayn (Between the Two Palaces), which is still used today although traces of the palaces are long gone. More recently, the street has given its name to the first novel of Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy, where it is usually translated as ‘Palace walk’.