29 Jul 2024
Our guide, Emad, was very experienced and answered any questions we had about the sites we visited. The sites were all very beautiful and it was really interesting to learn about the the religious history of the city. Unfortunately there were a few elements that made it less enjoyable compared to other tours we have been on. At the mosque he told us about the role of women in Islam. He communicated some things about women and marriage in a way that was confusing, he was saying polygamy was common practice and good because women only care about money and they are mostly important for reproduction. He then told us it actually isn’t common at all when we questioned him further, and I got the impression he chose to describe it this way to more surprise us than inform us. I asked him about the layout of the mosque for prayer in terms of where men and women pray as we had discussed this in the Ben Ezra synagogue before. He chose to explain the reasoning for women to pray at the back and men at the front to avoid “doggy style” in the mosque. Which was an uncomfortable way to describe a religious tradition, however I am from a very secular area so I am not overly familiar with current interpretations of religious traditions, of which I’m sure there are many. We would have preferred to learn more about the significance of the buildings and religion in Egyptian history and recent history.
Finally, we went to the Khan-el-khalili bazaar and had 50 minutes to spend there. He forewarned us that most of the wares are imported and not made in Egypt which put us off buying much there but it was interesting to walk around and we did not get hassled much. This is no fault of Emad’s, but I would advise other visitors to visit on their own without the time pressure of an itinerary, as when we drove away we saw the bazaar spread much further across both sides of the road and there was much more nationally produced and local items in other areas with less stuff geared towards tourists.