Alexander the Nice by no means noticed the town he envisioned and had named after himself virtually two and a half millennia in the past. He was there to map it out, utilizing grains of barley because the story goes, solely to go away and stick with it his conquests, earlier than dying on the age of 32 in Babylon, greater than 1,300km (800 miles) from Alexandria.
He might have died, however his metropolis didn’t.
Alexandria: The Metropolis that Modified the World, by Egyptian-British educational Islam Issa, himself one of many a centesimal era of Alexandrians, is the biography of what’s now Egypt’s second metropolis.
Alexandria, the bride of the ocean as it’s nicknamed in Arabic right this moment in reference to its Mediterranean location, is commonly ignored when discussing the world’s biggest cities. Its significance – it was as soon as a rival to Rome – is forgotten, however Issa takes the reader on a mesmerising journey via the town’s historical past, its tales, and its tragedies.
We encounter the town’s rulers – together with a brief interval within the ninth century when it was managed by pirates from Spain – and all of the populations who’ve made the town dwelling, together with Greeks, Egyptians, Jews, Arabs, Turks, French, British, and Italians.
The eponymous founder
The e-book is not only the story of a metropolis, however in its early chapters, of a person whose identify has echoed via the ages.
Alexandria symbolises Alexander the Nice. Each turned bywords for cosmopolitanism: Alexandria in its combined inhabitants and id, Alexander in his influence throughout three continents.
However whereas the person named quite a few cities after himself (Kandahar in Afghanistan and Khujand in Tajikistan have been initially named in his honour), right this moment, there is just one Alexandria.
Issa does a implausible job of explaining the historical past, taking the time to share the tales, each legendary and factual, which have made Alexandria the town it’s right this moment, the most important on the Mediterranean Sea.
There are some fascinating hyperlinks. Legend has it that Helen of Troy was taken to what’s now Alexandria. The Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem was modelled on a golden dome within the Egyptian metropolis. Venice named its St Mark’s Basilica after a saint whose physique was stolen by Venetian retailers from Alexandria. And Zionism, the Arab League and Egypt’s 2011 revolution all have ties to the town.
However to start with, Alexandria was Pharos, an island off the coast of Egypt. A causeway was constructed to the mainland, and the pure gradual deposit of silt widened it to type the geography we all know right this moment. The expansion of the town on the again of its founding by Alexander and the rule of the Ptolemaic dynasty (305-30 BC) that adopted led to a fast inflow of individuals from across the historical Mediterranean world, interested in what the writer calls the “Alexandrian Dream”, a spot of vast avenues, copious marble and large parks, the place the Pharos Lighthouse, an historical surprise of the world, served as an historical Statue of Liberty.
The trendy thought of historical past is commonly certainly one of battle, however the e-book showcases the marvels of the previous, such because the Library of Alexandria, with its giant columns and sculptures, and ceiling-high cupboards full of papyrus scrolls – and presumably over a million books in complete by the primary century BC.
The library itself was a state undertaking that was envisioned from the very formation of the town. Rulers have been keen to pay large sums to accumulate texts and sacrifice relationships with different states to maintain them in Alexandria. On the Alexandrian equal of customs it was books that have been seized, and never out of any try to ban them, however as an alternative to resolve whether or not to grab them for the library. Librarians have been celebrities, with faculty college students on the time tasked with memorising their names.
One of many world’s foremost students of Queen Cleopatra, Issa dedicates an illuminating chapter to the nice Alexandrian, and a previous one to the forgotten Cleopatras – probably the most well-known one was the seventh of her identify in spite of everything.
The queen, whose racial identity has now led to a controversy that Issa addresses within the e-book, was as cosmopolitan as Alexandria itself, talking 11 languages. She was additionally the primary of the Hellenistic Ptolemaic dynasty to be absolutely fluent in Egyptian.
Usually portrayed within the West as opportunistic and reliant on the abilities of seduction, Issa factors out that Alexandrians view her otherwise. He explains how he grew up listening to celebratory tales. “She was a source of pride who, I would learn, was an intellectual who debated powerful men,” Issa writes, earlier than bringing in medieval Arabic sources that painting the queen respectfully, specializing in her contributions to medication, slightly than her bodily look.
Native data
The style during which Issa handles Cleopatra is a testomony to the significance of Alexandria’s historical past being advised by a local, somebody of the town, at a time when the tales of the broader area are sometimes advised by outsiders.
And Issa’s storytelling and experience communicate to the love he has for his metropolis.
Transferring away from Alexandria’s historical previous, via the Arab conquest after which the European invasions, we come to extra trendy instances, and the good thing about having a local inform the story of Alexandria grows in significance.
We study extra about Issa’s family historical past in Alexandria, which takes the narrative away from these of the wealthy and highly effective that naturally carries via the centuries to that of the frequent individual: a fisherman, a scrap seller, a instructor.
Issa’s grandfather was a neighbour of Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser as a baby in Alexandria’s working-class Bacos space – itself named after the traditional deity Bacchus. His mother and father have recollections of the 1967 Six-Day Battle with Israel and a member of the family’s dying within the October Battle of 1973.
Alexandria itself has expanded, from the unique island and the causeway to it, and now throughout the bay, and deep into the south. Centuries of declines and rises, together with pure disasters and fast growth have turned it from the traditional vast avenues to a metropolis of alleys, because the e-book describes it, the place “everyone knows their neighbour’s news”. The unrest that has manifested itself throughout the remainder of Egypt, partly because of the nation’s financial difficulties, but in addition its repressive authorities, reared their head in Alexandria with the killing of a younger man, Khaled Said, by Egyptian police in 2010. A Fb group would type to demand justice, ultimately changing into one of many teams that organised the protest motion that might topple President Hosni Mubarak the next yr.
The strife has contributed to the town’s id, however so does its historical past. Issa quotes a preferred entice artist, Marwan Pablo, who sings “I’m not from Egypt, me, I’m from Alexandriaaa”.
That doesn’t imply locals aren’t proud Egyptians, they’re. However they’re additionally Alexandrian.
Town isn’t as cosmopolitan because it as soon as was, or as Alexander himself would have as soon as envisioned. The Europeans and Jews have largely left, however not so way back – Issa’s father nonetheless remembers the native patissier talking to him in Egyptian Arabic as he gave him his order. He was of Greek origin, sure, however Alexandrian.
The Greeks and different communities could also be gone, however Issa factors out that it doesn’t imply the town’s tradition is a monolith.
“In a single space, there will be Muslims and Christians sitting together, a bearded man and a goth on adjacent tables, and in the queue, a woman wearing a colourful beach dress in front of another wearing a black face veil,” Issa writes. “In today’s Alexandria, in this globalised city, you are free to adopt whatever cultural identity you want.”
Sure, it’s an Arab and majority Muslim metropolis, however “today’s apparent hegemony is living in the shadow of a melting pot”, because the combined heritage of its inhabitants proves. Issa ends the e-book by describing certainly one of his personal journeys to Alexandria, arriving from the ocean, and the way the historical past of the town nonetheless lives on, in each his creativeness and the scene that sits earlier than him.
And this isn’t the top of the story. The current tradition of Alexandria, the homogeneity that has accompanied the town’s postcolonial historical past, Issa factors out, is about 75 years previous, a tiny fraction of its 2,500-year-old historical past. “So, who’s to know what will happen two and a half millennia from now?”
Regardless of the future does deliver, it will likely be arduous to inform its story in a extra knowledgeable and affectionate approach than Issa has. His historical past is a tribute to Alexandria, a reservoir of information on the town, and units a marker for these wishing to inform the tales of the world’s nice cities.
