medina (walled for protection). It has monumental places of
worship, including many mosques with their distinctive domes
and minarets; and it has a sprawling suq, or marketplace, clearly
recognizable as the forerunner of the modern Western shop-
ping mall. It also has a rather chaotic street plan that was not
laid out along the Western grid system and was never designed
for modern vehicular traffic. Thus, the old city has had great
new swaths cut into it and elevated highways erected above it
to accommodate Cairo’s infamous traffic.