The Digital Cairo Project: Translating al-Maqrizi's Khitat

FAIN: FT-56915-09

Martyn Smith
Lawrence University of Wisconsin (Appleton, WI 54911-5798)

The Digital Cairo Project will harness digital technologies to make previously inaccessible information about medieval Cairo freely available to scholars, students, travelers, and others interested in this city. The centerpiece of the project is the Khitat, a detailed topographic history of Cairo written by 15th century Egyptian historian al-Maqrizi. Martyn Smith, Ph.D., will embark on the first-ever translation of the Khitat into a European language. Digital technologies (e.g. customized historic maps created with Google Earth) enable a fully-illustrated, Web-based edition of the text that provides the reader both with big-picture views of how Cairo changed over time as well as detailed photo tours of key historic structures described by al-Maqrizi -- visual context essential to understanding the text. During the grant period, Smith will translate key sections of greatest scholarly interest and launch the website at .