Cairo (Arabic: القاهرة transliteration: al-Qāhira), which means "the triumphant", is the capital and largest city in Egypt and Africa. It is the most populous metropolitan area in Egypt and is also one of the most populous in the world. It is the Arab World's largest and Africa's most populous city. While Al-Qahirah is the official name of the city, in Egyptian Arabic it is called by the dialect's name for the country, Masr (Egypt's first Arab capital, Fustat, was known as Misr al-Fustat, "City of the Tents").
Cairo was founded by the Fatimid caliphs as a royal enclosure. It replaced Fustat as the seat of the government. It later came under the Mamluks, was ruled by the Ottomans 1517 to 1798, and briefly occupied by Napoleon. Muhammad Ali of Egypt made Cairo the capital of his independent empire from 1805 to 1882, after which the British took control of it until Egypt attained independence in 1922.
Cairo has a population of about 8 million people, according to the 2006 population census. The number of inhabitants was about a million higher at the time of the census, but this was adjusted downwards on the 17th of April 2008 when the new government of Helwan was created from parts of the old Cairo government. Cairo's metropolitan area has a population of about 17.8 million people. Cairo is the sixteenth most populous metropolitan area in the world. It is also the most populous metropolitan area in Africa.
Cairo has a mix of historical and modern cultural sights. This includes the Pyramids, the Hanging Church, Saladin's Citadel, the Virgin Mary's Tree, the Sphinx, and Heliopolis, Al-Azhar, the Mosque of Amr ibn al-A'as, Saqqara, the Cairo Tower, and the Old City. Cairo is nicknamed "The City of A Thousand Minarets".
Written by Wendy 
