the cave church of the zabbaleen in cairo | amusing planet
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9/14/13 11:59 PMThe Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo | Amusing Planet
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The Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo
By Kaushik Tuesday, September 10, 2013 Middle East, Travel 1 comment
The Monastery of Saint Simon, also known as the Cave Church, is located in the Mokattam mountain in southeastern Cairo,Egypt, in an area that is known as ‘garbage city’ because of the large population of garbage collectors or Zabbaleen that livethere. The Zabbaleen are descendants of farmers who started migrating from Upper Egypt to Cairo in the 1940s. Fleeing poorharvests and poverty they came to the city looking for work and set-up makeshift settlements around the city. Initially, theystuck to their tradition of raising pigs, goats, chickens and other animals, but eventually found collecting and sorting of wasteproduced by the city residents more profitable. The Zabbaleen would sort through household garbage, salvaging and sellingthings of value, while the organic waste provided an excellent source of food for their animals. In fact, this arrangement workedso well, that successive waves of migrants came from Upper Egypt to live and work in the newly founded garbage villages ofCairo.
Photo credit: Gianluigi Guercia
For years, the makeshift settlements of the Zabbaleen were moved around the city trying to avoid the municipal authorities.Finally, a large group of Zabbaleen settled under the cliffs of the Mokattam or Moquattam quarries at the eastern edge of thecity, which has now grown from a population of 8,000 in the early 1980s, into the largest garbage collector community in Cairo,with approximately 30,000 Zabbaleen inhabitants.
Egypt is a Muslim-majority country, but the Zabbaleen are Coptic Christians, at least, 90 percent of them are. Christiancommunities are rare to find in Egypt, so the Zabbaleen prefer to stay in Mokattam within their own religious community eventhough many of them could afford houses elsewhere.
The local Coptic Church in Mokattam Village was established in 1975. After the establishment of the church, the Zabbaleen feltmore secure in their location and only then began to use more permanent building materials, such as stone and bricks, for theirhomes. Given their previous experience of eviction from Giza in 1970, the Zabbaleen had lived in temporary tin huts up till thatpoint. In 1976, a large fire broke out in Manshiyat Nasir, which led to the beginning of the construction of the first church belowthe Mokattam mountain on a site of 1,000 square meters. Several more churches have been built into the caves found inMokattam, of which the Monastery of St. Simon the Tanner is the largest with a seating capacity of 20,000. In fact, the Cave
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9/14/13 11:59 PMThe Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo | Amusing Planet
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Church of St. Simon in Mokattam is the largest church in the Middle East.
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9/14/13 11:59 PMThe Cave Church of the Zabbaleen in Cairo | Amusing Planet
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The garbage city. Photo credit
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Sources: Wikipedia, A.P.E. Cairo
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Anonymous September 13, 2013 at 8:29 AM
"Gouge out your eyes", and other wise parables. Lovely.
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