"The Higher Nilus Swell the More it Promises": The Nilometer at al-Rawda Island in Medieval Islamic Cairo

When: Tuesday, October 2, 2018

               12:00pm-2:00pm

Where: 285 Victoria Street, Room: 202

A talk by: Dr. Heba Mostafa, Assistant Professor in the Islamic Arts and Architecture Department at the University of Toronto

Event abstract:

"The Higher Nilus Swell the More it Promises": The Nilometer at al-Rawda Island in Medieval Islamic Cairo

The Nile’s annual flood lies at the crux of a self-evidently critical cycle in Egyptian life. In fact, the mandate to govern Egypt has always been contingent upon this critical responsibility; to gauge and channel the river Nile as Egypt’s life source. This was a critical administrative, engineering and hydraulic endeavor which entailed precise monitoring of water levels to predict harvests and levy taxes, alongside dam construction and canal dredging for land cultivation. Yes these pragmatic aspects were only one face of the coin. The mandate to govern Egypt was also contingent upon Nile veneration. The Nile was not only the guarantor of Egypt’s prosperity but also the conduit of divine grace and God’s agent of reward and punishment. Conceived as much more than an apparatus, the Abbasid

Nilometer at the island of al-Rawda ( 861 CE)-a rare surviving Medieval example of a measuring device-became a focus of veneration. This talk will explore the Nilometer in Medieval Egypt as “totemic gauge” by placing it back into these richer historical, urban and architectural contexts to tell an alternative history of the Medieval Nilometer.