Recently, Annalise DeVries, an American university professor who has been studying and writing about “Al-Ma’adi” as part of her interest in Egyptian history, society and culture, published a book about this Cairo suburb: “Ma’adi: The Making and Unmaking of a Cairo Suburb, 1878–1962.” In 2013, she had finished her PhD dissertation, “In Ma’adi, Near Cairo: Locating Global History in British-Occupied Egypt, 1878-1962.” In 2015, she published “Utopia in the Suburbs: Cosmopolitan Society, Class Privilege, and the Making of Maʿadi Garden City in Twentieth Century Cairo” in the Journal of Social History that was published by Oxford University. The following year, in the same journal, she reviewed a book, “Modernizing Marriage: Family, Ideology, and Law in Nineteenth- and Early Twentieth-Century Egypt.”
Currently a professor at Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, she taught at the University of Alabama and Birmingham-Southern College. However, all along she had been writing about comparative history, imperialism, past and modern Egypt, and the modern Middle East.
Her recent book is not the only one that was published about Al-Ma’adi’s history. In 1995, Egyptian Samir Raafat, published “Maadi 1904-1962: Society and History in a Cairo Suburb.” DeVries’ book, obviously, digs deeper into the past.
According to DeVries’ book, at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Egyptian Delta Land and Investment Company (Delta Land) broke ground in Maʿadi, a new residential development a few miles south of Cairo, on the eastern bank of the Nile, using the latest in community planning that was designed by a Canadian army general and keeping the name of an ancient village that had been there.
It was reported that “Al-Maa’di” referred to the presence, in the past, of boat ferries (“ma’adiyat” in Arabic) that carried people across the Nile. But recent archaeological diggings discovered building and artifacts that belonged to around 3500 BC.
Raafat’s book, “Maadi 1904-1962,” was in reference to the year when the railway between Cairo and Helwan was built.
“Over the fifty years that followed, this new, modern Ma’adi would be associated with what many believed to be the best of modern Egypt- spacious villas, lush gardens, popular athleticism, and, most of all, profitability.” And that “(w)hile Ma’adi became home to influential Egyptians, including nationalists and royalty, it always remained exclusive―too exclusive to appeal to the growing number of lower-income Egyptians making homes in the capital.”
According to the PhD dissertation, Al-Ma’adi “became home to a mixture of former British colonial civil servants, European commercial expatriates, influential Egypt-born Jews, and upper middle-class Egyptians.”
During the Second World War, Al-Ma’adi had its share of defending Egypt, as about 70,000 soldiers from New Zealand established a base there in alliance with the British forces who were getting ready to face the advancing Nazi troops led by the German General Erwin Rommel who was known as the “Desert Fox.” In 1942 at Al-Alamein, near the Libyan border, the Nazis were finally defeated.
But the 1952 Revolution that toppled King Farouk and ended his centuries-old dynasty of foreign origin, abolished many financial and social privileges. And Al-Ma’adi “appeared more and more as a figure of the country’s past.” As Egypt “embraced a socialist Pan-Arab ideology, Maʿadi could not abide in its earlier form. With Egypt’s place in the world changing, Maʿadi was absorbed into the sprawl of greater Cairo and increasingly appeared as the relic of a former elite who had lost their place of influence.”
But, compared to many other sections of Cairo, Al-Ma’adi continues to be unique. Many foreign embassies, homes of international expatriates, rich Arabs and prominent Egyptians are located there. Also situated in Al-Ma’adi are major international schools, sporting clubs and cultural institutions, for example, the Supreme Constitutional Court and the National Egyptian Geological Museum.
“Al-Ma’adi” gave birth to “Al-Ma’adi Al-Jadeeda” (New Ma’adi), three Metro stops were built, and companies from the Gulf established their headquarters. The “Al-Ma’adi Sporting and Yacht Club was founded by the British in 1921, exactly a hundred years ago.
