Midan of Many Layers

Khedive Ismail, grandson of Mohamed Ali Pasha and ruler from 1863 to 1879, created the square as part of a spectacular, European-style quarter along the Nile, now known as Garden City, punctuated by palaces and gardens. Ismailia Square, as it was known at the time, was modeled after late nineteenth-century Paris, with broad boulevards radiating off roundabouts like spokes off wheels. Pascale Ghazaleh, a professor of history at the American University in Cairo (AUC) says that this square was closely associated with European influence and the ruling class — the showpiece of Ismail’s Cairo, the area where his vision for Egypt was most visibly realized.British soldiers were stationed in Ismailia Square after 1882, when Kasr El-Nil Barracks (Nile Palace) became the British occupation army’s headquarters and barracks. In 1902, French architect Marcel Dourgnon built the neoclassical Egyptian Museum. “In other words, this part of Cairo displayed and made legible, as part of a new urban landscape, the ruling class’ aspiration to become part of Europe and the colonial occupiers’ ambition to inscribe their presence on the capital,” Ghazaleh says. She adds that the neighborhood’s central location made it attractive for a wide range of different institutions, such as AUC, which opened in 1919. New regime, new name

After the 1952 coup, Ismailia Square was renamed Tahrir Square (Liberation Square). As Ghazaleh explains, Tahrir remained just as central under the new regime as it had been under the old one. The blocky, bureaucratic Mogamma, which opened in 1951 just before the military coup d’état, became a symbol of the Free Officers and the regime they inaugurated.During the 1950s, Kasr El-Nil was torn down, with the Arab League headquarters and the former Nile Hilton Hotel raised in its place. “New layers of symbolism thus took hold as the bureaucracy developed, ambiguous advances toward Western capitalism were made and Arab nationalism gained in popularity,” says Ghazaleh. Tahrir and the surrounding area were emptied of their cosmopolitan, Europeanized content, although their form remained the same. Ghazaleh explains that long before January 25, Tahrir was an important site for the 1977 uprising, also referred to as the bread riots. Under pressure from International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to liberalize the economy, then-President Anwar Sadat attempted to lift subsidies on basic foodstuffs. Protesters ranging from the poor and working classes to students and activists took over the square. “More generally, because of its high visibility, its proximity to the Parliament and Ministry of Interior and its centrality to traffic from all over Cairo, Tahrir has been the natural place of convergence for protestors,” Ghazaleh says, “even as the city fragments and dissolves into satellite offshoots and slums.” The history professor notes that it has always been difficult for protestors to organize and meet there because they were immediately cordoned off by legions of riot police. “This time, however, the organizers of the revolution planned it brilliantly,” she says, “advertising protest marches in 20 places around the city and thus dispersing security forces.” With the success of the 2011 uprising in ending former President Hosni Mubarak’s 30 year-presidency, Tahrir now has an additional layer of symbolism. Ghazaleh says this revolution marks the first time ordinary citizens have come out in such numbers and performed such acts of “extraordinary bravery or ordinary heroism” to make themselves heard. “[The square] is associated with true democracy, practiced in the face of brutal despotism,” she says. “This was not top-down liberation, but a revolution against fear and oppression.”