Khan el-Khalili

Khan el-Khalili is a large market district in the historic centre of Cairo, between Al-Hussein Mosque and Al-Muizz Street, in the area of the old Fatimid city. It forms part of Historic Cairo, inscribed by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site in 1979.

The bazaar takes its name from a caravanserai, or khan, built between 1382 and 1389 by the Mamluk emir Jaharkas al-Khalili on the site of a Fatimid mausoleum at the southern end of a former Fatimid palace. In 1511 Sultan al-Ghuri rebuilt the khan, and his gates, Bab al-Ghuri and Bab al-Badistan, still stand.

Today the market is a maze of alleys lined with small shops selling brass and copper lamps, silver and gold jewellery, spices, perfume oils, textiles, inlaid boxes and souvenirs. El Fishawy café, established in 1773, serves tea and shisha in one of the lanes. The Nobel Prize winning writer Naguib Mahfouz set his 1947 novel Midaq Alley in an alley of the district. Nearby are Al-Azhar Mosque, the Al-Hussein Mosque and the medieval monuments of Al-Muizz Street.

Entry to the bazaar is free and bargaining is expected. Evenings are livelier and cooler than the middle of the day.

How did the bazaar grow into its present shape?

The khan stood on the southern end of the eastern Fatimid Great Palace, and the open space between the Fatimid palaces, known as Bayn al-Qasrayn, is now the stretch of Al-Muizz Street beside the bazaar. By the early 16th century the district already had 21 khans and wikalas, the lodging houses where travelling merchants stored goods and slept, and by the late 18th century there were about 39.

Sultan al-Ghuri added his own large wikala near his religious complex in the early 16th century. After the Ottoman conquest of 1517, Cairo's Turkish community settled around the bazaar, and Turkish traders lodged at the Wikala al-Qutn. Its facade still lines Sikkat al-Badistan, the street that also holds al-Ghuri's two carved stone gates. The gates once had other names: Bab al-Badistan was Bab al-Silsila and Bab al-Ghuri was Bab al-Nuhhas.

The goldsmiths' souq next to the bazaar remains important to local shoppers. The Mosque of al-Hussein and its shrine stand on Midan al-Hussein at the eastern edge of the district. The bazaar has seen violence too. A bomb on 22 February 2009 killed a 17-year-old French visitor and injured 22 people.