In 1942, my grandfather found Alexandria a welcome change to Tobruk and for an ancient city in Egypt its connections are surprisingly wide. Many will know the Greek poet Cavafy – who wrote inter alia ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ (a poem whose relevance never diminishes) and Patrick White was also there, though I doubt he and Pop mixed in the same circles.

In Alexandria Islam Issa gives us a deep dive into a city he obviously cares a lot about. And what a city it is. The story of its foundation by Alexander the Great, the sibling-loving Ptolemies, Cleopatra and her Romans are well known. The great service Issa does is by taking that story up to the present.

After them Ancients, the city continued to flourish under Islamic rule – Umayyads, Abbasids and Fatimids. Egypt remained a wealthy and fertile land with its distinctive identity and Alexandria remained a multicultural entrepôt. The city came back into Western focus in the wake of the French Revolution when Napoleon and Nelson met the Mamluks and in the early 19th century. Under Ali Pasha it narrowly missed the boat to modernity but became something of a multicultural oasis.

This is a work of synthesis rather than original research but Issa writes well and when he hits more recent times, he provides a valuable and unfamiliar Egyptian point of view.

Reviewed by Grant Hansen

ABOUT THE AUTHOR