Fustat, now part of Old Cairo in Egypt, was founded in 641 by the Arab commander Amr ibn al-As after the Muslim conquest and became the first capital of Muslim Egypt; its Mosque of Amr was the first mosque built in the country. It remained the economic centre after the Fatimids founded Cairo just to the north in 969, and the Fatimid astronomer Ibn Yunus worked at an observatory on nearby Mount Mokattam. The city was deliberately set on fire in 1168 to keep it from a Crusader army. Its Ben Ezra Synagogue held the Cairo Geniza, and Moses Maimonides settled there in 1166; after his death in 1204 his son Abraham succeeded him as head of Egyptian Jewry.
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Fostat (Old Cairo) through the eras
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Rishonim
Fostat in the Rishonic era was the mercantile heart of Egypt under successive Islamic dynasties—the Fatimids until 1171, then the Ayyubids and Mamluks—a sprawling port city where the Nile's traffic made fortunes and where Jewish merchants, physicians, and administrators flourished in relative security despite the precariousness of dhimmi status. The Jewish community numbered in the thousands, deeply embedded in Cairo's economy and occasionally in its courts; they maintained multiple synagogues, the most famous being Ben Ezra, and produced a remarkable literary and legal culture documented in the Cairo Geniza, that treasure trove of discarded letters and contracts that would later reveal the era's intimacy. Here the intellectual life centered on biblical and Talmudic interpretation, liturgical poetry, and practical responsa addressing the daily dilemmas of a commercial people—questions about contracts, inheritance, and kashrut that bound scholar to merchant. Abraham Maimuni, son of Maimonides, led the community in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, deepening pietistic practice while his father's philosophical and legal legacy shaped discourse across the Jewish world. The city's energy came from its position as crossroads: spice traders calling at the quays, caravanserais filling with goods from the Red Sea, and in the Jewish quarter, scribes and teachers reproducing books by hand under the Mediterranean light.