The city a Shia dynasty founded in 969 CE beside the Nile and named al-Qahira, 'the Victorious' — which grew into the largest and richest metropolis of the medieval Islamic world, home to the al-Azhar mosque and its thousand-year center of learning, and is today the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world.
A new dynasty laid out Cairo in 969 CE as a walled palace-city for a single ruling family, closed to ordinary people. Within three centuries the gates had burst, and the place had become, by many estimates, one of the largest cities outside China: a hub of the spice trade, a forest of stone mosques and tombs, and the seat of a religious school that still trains scholars today. When the Mongols sacked Baghdad in 1258, the old center of the Islamic world died — and Cairo inherited the role. Most great cities grow from villages. Cairo was built, on purpose, to be a capital.