Reading Urban Forms in Historic Cairo: A Diachronic Typological Approach

Historic Cairo presents a multilayered urban fabric shaped by successive processes of addition, adaptation and reuse. This paper offers a diachronic, multi-scalar reading of its res idential forms through five key typologies: the Rab ‘a (row house), represented by the case study of Rab ‘ a al-Tabbāna; the wikāla (caravanserai); the Ottoman courtyard house; the Ottoman block house; and the early twentieth-century apart ment block. Drawing on typological–processual analysis and archival studies of the Ra ‘ a tradition, the paper examines how these types articulate the relationships among territorial conditions, commercial axes, and fine-grained urban tissues, emphasising the long-term persistence of specific architec tural features and metropolitan patterns that define Cairo’s longue durée urban identity.