In the shade of the pyramids and minarets of Cairo, the tradition of pigeon and homing pigeon breeders has been handed down.

Cairo is a chaotic, immense and difficult city. The streets are always too crowded and the continuous cacophony of horns denies concentration and quickly exhausts one’s energy. But raise your eyes and you will realize that there is another level of the city, hidden and almost inaccessible, a kingdom where birds and their keepers are masters.
It’s a day like many others in the working-class heart of Cairo; the streets crowded with vendors and three-wheeled vans all look the same, dominated by the tall concrete and red brick buildings that have sprouted like mushrooms in recent decades. A monotony of shapes and colours broken only by a large flamboyant structure similar to a cistern or a crooked medieval tower that seems to be supported with long, unstable stilts on the flat roof of a building.

A boy with pigeons at the Souk al Gomaa Friday market in Cairo. Shutterstock/Emily Marie Wilson

Groups of people crowd around the wooden pillars and along the dizzying ladder that seems liable to collapse at any moment. Suddenly, one of these figures takes out two large red flags and starts waving them with regular and rhythmic movements while keeping his eyes raised to the sky. Soon a flock of birds begins to circle lower and lower towards the roof of the building.
It is one of the thousands of gheyas that dot the roofs of the Egyptian capital: dovecotes where many Cairo residents can dedicate themselves to pigeon breeding, a widespread passion which for some is also an important source of income.

Ancient Roots
According to historians, the Egyptians’ love for pigeons is so ancient that even hieroglyphs testify to their widespread presence and the custom of offering them as sacrifices on the occasion of rites or funerals, while in the era of the Fatimid rulers (X-XII century AD) the use of birds as messengers and pets is documented.
It is a tradition found not only in the cities but also in the countryside: in the villages of the delta or further south along the river, and in the enormous agricultural area of the Fayyum, it is not uncommon to notice flocks of birds crowding around certain high constructions.

Muhammad Ali Mosque in Cairo. 123rf

Rural dovecotes are large conical towers similar to chimneys made of sun-dried mud, where holes arranged in geometric patterns and transversal wooden poles allow the pigeons to rest or enter, sheltered from predators.At first glance, their appearance recalls the shape of the minarets of Sahelian mosques and the unmistakable outlines of the rural landscapes that wind along the Nile.
And food has nothing to do with it: while it is true that these birds are often found in various typical delicacies such as the famous hamam mahshi, pigeons stuffed with spiced rice and bulgur cooked for a long time in the oven, at the same time, bird breeding is a true passion that has been handed down for generations. Pigeon racing, for example, is a widely practised sport: on the rooftops of Cairo, many both young and old spend entire afternoons training their squadrons with large flags acting as a call to the roost.

Heavenly challenges
The most common type of race is the long-distance speed race. This involves the flocks being released in distant cities with an encrypted message, contained in a package attached to the leg, which is communicated by the farmers to the jury as counter-evidence as soon as the birds reach the base. These can be seen as Marathons of the skies that fascinate and become legendary competitions, like the one that takes place annually between Cairo and Aswan, almost 700 kilometres of flight across the whole of Egypt.Besides racing, there are other hobbies involving pigeons. Other very popular competitions involve real wars between flocks that have to capture or try to free themselves from opposing teams, with the ownership of the birds themselves and the consequent size of their “army” at stake.

An old woman selling pigeons in an Egyptian market. Shutterstock/RovingPhotogZA

Once down from their towers, breeders and enthusiasts have an unmissable meeting point: the animal market held on Fridays around Al Khelaa, the long road that crosses the famous suburb of the “City of the Dead”. Along the road, thousands of coloured plastic cages are piled up from which birds of all types look out, from tiny canaries to enormous hawks motionless on their perches.
Pigeons and doves are obviously among the best-sellers here. To the untrained eye, these immense flocks are distinguished only by their plumage, which ranges from pure white to dark grey and beige, but the attentive gaze of the breeders can immediately identify different species with their respective characteristics and qualities, establishing the setting of prices starting from a few tens of Egyptian pounds for the youngest and most inexperienced specimens and reach several thousand, more than the average monthly salary of an Egyptian.

Architecture to be conserved
In addition to its social, cultural, economic and ecosystem enhancement aspects, the tradition of pigeon breeding also has its effects on the urban landscape and the appearance of the city. In fact, the gheya are unmistakable structures that make the roofs of Cairo unique. A dizzying castle of vertical and diagonal wooden poles up to 7-8 meters high on which rests a large fence made of thin wooden slats placed side by side and painted in bright colours and with geometric decorative motifs.
Inside the enclosure, accessible with ladders, cages are arranged along the perimeter, while a wide rope net acts as a ceiling and prevents the possible arrival of predators or rival flocks.

Pigeons in Giza City flying on the houses. 123rf

Like tall and lively medieval watchtowers, the pigeon lofts overlook the entire city, becoming a distinctive architectural element, especially in the working-class neighbourhoods where the monotony of the buildings with a concrete skeleton and red brick walls interrupted by a few sparse windows is enlivened by the colours of the decorated walls.
In its frenetic growth, the Egyptian capital (one of the largest metropolises on the planet) is inexorably destroying fundamental parts of its past, such as the famous awamat, the centuries-old floating houses removed from the banks of the Nile a year ago, or various inhabited tombs of the City of the Dead, demolished to widen highways and bridges.The most popular areas are especially prone to suffer demolitions and heavy transformations daily in the name of mobility, urban decorum and a questionable idea of progress that has no regard for anyone, not even for history. The pigeon lofts, however, seem to resist, perhaps thanks to their elevated and almost hidden position, and continue to give colour, lightness and vitality to the skies of a difficult city which never ceases to surprise. (Open Photo: Sunset over Cairo with silhouettes of flying birds. Shutterstock/Repina Valeriya)

Federico Monica/Africa

Recycled material reigns supreme in Nike’s modern art galleries in Lagos and Abuja. It brings together, on crowded walls, sculptures, textiles, jewellery, amulets and paintings that lay claim
to another Nigeria.

It’s not easy to keep up with Nike Okundaye, founder of the Nike Art Gallery art centres in Lagos, Abuja, Òsogbo and Ogídi-Ìjúmi. Known as Mama Nike, she arrives with her four daughters in a very small van decorated with striking colours and photographs. As you enter the gallery in Lagos, you are welcomed by animal sculptures inspired by real creatures and others from the artists’ imagination. They share the space with signs announcing workshops, cultural activities and city tours in which Nike’s seemingly inexhaustible energy takes centre stage.
Smiling, welcoming and overwhelming, Nike takes several questions that she barely has time to answer to quickly classify her interviewer. As she affectionately greets the employees and artists in training, she heads towards the large door leading to a multi-storey gallery whose centre is occupied by panels that share the available space.

Nike Art Gallery, Lagos. CC BY 2.0/Jeremy Weate

The walls are covered with paintings. The floor is also a space covered with contemporary art pieces that occupy enormous tables on which piles of drawings must be unpacked in order to appreciate them. “From rubbish to treasure, from waste to wealth”, is how Nike defines her works, made largely with recycled materials, a technique in which the African continent is a true master.
“We use wax to make large jewels, even animal remains that speak of Nigerian tradition, or wood to make other traditional jewels that can be used to decorate the wall, for those who prefer not to hang up painting,” Nike continues. She stops just long enough to show what she is explaining, but without lingering too much, aware of the enormous work she has managed to concentrate on in the gallery. Her aim is to cover as much as possible and offers her personal attention to each artist, telling how they arrived at that point in their creation, their maturation process and the meaning of shapes and colours.

Nike’s work
“My work focuses on coloured balls and glue. I like to make things that people can wear, for example, the hats I design. We give some pieces a coloured patina to make them look older,” explains Nike, interpreting the genre with unwaning enthusiasm. In the area of textiles, with blue and indigo fabrics printed with geometric figures, you can see another of her best-known techniques. “When we wear a tunic or a certain dress, we are saying something about ourselves”, she says, passing her hand over the garments hanging in the exhibition area.

Visitors at the Nike Art Gallery in Lagos. Photo: Carla Fibla García-Sala

Nike comes from a childhood marked by poverty and the loss of her mother. At the age of 16, she left home and went to live with the artistic community of Òsogbo and a year later she participated in her first exhibition organized by the Goethe Institute. Six years later she managed to study sewing at the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts (USA) and in 1981 she won first prize at the Southwest Washington Art Festival. Subsequently, recognition came from London and the UN, which in 1994 chose her among the 50 artists selected worldwide to show their work in a documentary on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the organization.

Creating community
She began sharing her knowledge with her first arts and culture centre which opened in Òsogbo in 1983. Almost 20 years later she did the same in Abuja, the capital, and in 2009 in Lagos. In 1996, she moved to the economic capital of the country and created the Textile and Sewing Center in Ogídi-Ìjúmi (Kogi State), which became her first training workshop. “I’ve always been obsessed with girls’ independence, but how to reach it? We managed to convince schools from 36 states to regularly send us 150 girls so that, while spending two months at the Òsogbo centre, they discover their skills and begin to develop them”, she proudly explains, still showing pieces made by some of the young women who passed through their workshops. Despite being well-known, Nike does not seem to have lost touch with the reality of her people, with the poverty and unemployment that afflict her country, conditions that she tries to show and, in part, remedy through art.

Nike art gallery, Abuja. CC BY-SA 4.0/Turizimpressions

In addition to public relations and monitoring artists in training, Nike dedicates several hours a day to developing their talents. Now in her eighth decade of life, her capacity for inspiration still remains intact. “You learn by trying to imitate, it’s the way to create your own style. This work – she says, indicating the face of a restless child – seems to say: ‘When I grow up, I want to be like you’, but when you look at it you only see a child. Yes, but the child tells you something.”
The reflections she offers while walking through the Lagos gallery leave no loose ends: “All these drawings are like communication by telephone… Here it is the barbed wire, the bamboo that unites us. It’s the cycle of life. The child is born, grows and becomes an adult. And that same child takes care of the one who took care of him or her as a child.”

“Art relaxes people, it’s very important because it has a healing component. You look at a work and feel a certain emotion, sometimes joy.” Photo: Nike Art Gallery

We pass in front of a work of hers which she playfully shows us, explaining that she needed to draw an aeroplane and convey what you feel when you get on board, which is why the painting is full of farewell words and good wishes for the journey. “There is this comparison in contemporary art between old and new creations, but we must focus on young artists because they are the ones who can give the most.”
Nike claims that visiting her art galleries is “a therapy” in which the most important thing is to look at the works and stop at the most evocative part of each one, trying to understand them and thinking about what would be going through the mind of the artist when he or she created them or draws conclusions whose understanding at times cannot be shared. “Art relaxes people, it’s very important because it has a healing component. You look at a work and feel a certain emotion, sometimes joy.”Although it is difficult to choose a technique or material to define current Nigerian contemporary art, Nike highlights the use of bronze, the application of wax – whose origin is in Benin City – and creativity in the textile sector “because it’s what’s attached to your skin, something very important and that’s why I started focusing on the designs we capture on fabrics, the meaning of the symbols we use. And that’s what I’m still dedicated to,” Nike concludes. (Nike Okundaye, founder of the Nike Art Gallery art Centre in Lagos. Photo:Carla Fibla García-Sala)

Carla Fibla García-Sala

Although colonization contributed to its urban development, Africa had already experienced the flourishing of cities from ancient times. Let us look back at some of these cities through what the continent’s first chroniclers said about them.

The African shore of the Mediterranean is the region in which the most ancient urbanization developed through the work of the Phoenicians, the Carthaginians and the Greeks, to whom Rome subjected and imposed its architectural and decorative canons: Phoenicians: Leptis Magna and Sabratha (Libya); Carthaginians: Kerkuane, Carthage (Tunisia) and Tipasa (Algeria); Greeks: Cyrene, Libya; and others such as Berenice (Benghazi), Adrianapolis (Driana), Tauchira (Toera), Tripoli and Ptolemais (Tolmetta).

The Theatre at the spectacular ruins of Leptis Magna near Al Khums, Libya. 123rf

The cities were located on a maritime trade route between Alexandria and Carthage whose main product was oil. Rome built cities to colonize or defend – the Algerian Djemila and Timgad – and administer – the Tunisian El Djem and the Moroccan Volubilis and the capital of Mauritania Tingitana. From these emerged a series of inland routes connected with the Saharan caravan routes.

The Cities of the Sahel
They were commercial centres that connected the Mediterranean with tropical Africa, such as Ghadamés, a Berber oasis town in the Nalut District of the Tripolitania region in northwestern Libya, of which Abu l-Hasan al-Bakri – a Muslim hagiographer wrote in The Roads and Kingdoms that it was “A beautiful city, well-watered with a palm grove”. Ualata in Mauritania, with a large market of gold, ivory, slaves, aromatic plants, salt, rubber, copper, tapestries and dates, according to Leo Africanus, whose real name was al-Hasan ibn Muhammad al-Wazzan al-Fasi, traveller, geographer and explorer, author of the Description of Africa.Teghazza, in the far north of Mali, supplied salt to the entire region, and there “Business is done for many hundredweights of gold dust”, wrote Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battutah commonly known as Ibn Battuta, a Maghrebi traveller, explorer and scholar in Through Islam, and said of the Takkeda enclave that “The people have no other work than trade. Every year they go to Egypt, from where they bring back all that is good in cloth and other things. They live in abundance
and in well-being”.

The ancient Moroccan town near Tinghir.123rf

Another geographer, Ibn Hwkal, author of Configuration of the World, wrote of Sijilmasa in Morocco: “Large palm groves, beautiful orchards and gardens can still be seen (…) The inhabitants are generous and cheerful; they distinguish themselves from the peoples of the Maghreb by their external appearance and behaviour. One can see in them the taste for science, modesty and a certain elegance of the body, the practice of virtuous qualities, composure and moderation. The palaces have high and solidly built doors”.
Poetic narrations by same author described other cities in Morocco. Speaking of Agmat he said that “There are all kinds of articles and merchandise”; of An-Nafis that “it is very ancient (…) densely populated and prosperous”; he considered Tamrurt “flirtatious and charming”; Kuga, “the richest in gold of all the countries of the gods”; Tadmekka “the one that most resembles Mecca”; and Uargla “an agglomeration of seven fortified villages”.

The Empires of the Sahel
They were the destination of the caravans. Audaghost in Mauritania was the main gold market. “It is a big city… The people live comfortably and own a lot of goods (…) There are beautiful buildings and very elegant houses (…) Their gold is the best and purest in the world.”
The empire of Ghana arose nearby and the capital, Kumbi Saleh, as Al-Bakri recounted, “is made up of two cities (…) One is inhabited by Muslims, the other is the city of the king”.

View of Timbuktu. Drawn by Martin Bernatz (1802–1878) after a sketch by Heinrich Barth (1821-1865). The lithograph was produced and printed by M. & N. Hanhart – Barth, Heinrich (1858)

Niani was the capital of the Malian Empire. Ibn Khaldum described it as “Very widespread, very populous and very commercial (…) a stopping place for caravans coming from the Maghreb, Ifriquiya and Egypt. The goods are shipped from all parts”. It was overshadowed by Gao, the capital of the Songhay empire, “One of the most famous in the country of the blacks”, and “Its inhabitants are rich merchants who constantly circulate in the region (…) An infinite number of blacks arrive there with a large quantity of gold to purchase objects imported from Barbary and Europe”, according to the writings of Al-Idrissi, Battuta and Leone Africanus respectively.
The Florentine Benedetto Dei visited Timbuktu in 1470 and said: “A lot of business is done selling thick fabrics, twills and cloth.” A century later, Leo Africanus indicated a turning point in business: “Many manuscript books are sold that come from Barbary. There is more profit from this sale than from all other commodities.”
At the end of the 16th century, in his work Tarik el-Fettach, Al Hajj Mahmud Kati (or Mahmoud Kati) an African Muslim Songhai scholar, warned that “Timbuktu had no rivals among the cities of the blacks (…) for the solidity of its institutions, political liberties, purity of customs, safety of persons and property, clemency and compassion for the poor and foreigners, and consideration for students and men of science”.

Great Mosque of Djenné. The city re-emerged in the 19th century as a cosmopolitan and prosperous city. Photo: Andrea Caruccio.

D’Jenne in Mali re-emerged in the 19th century as a cosmopolitan and prosperous city, and by the mid-12th century it was, for Al-Sadi, “A great fortunate and blessed city (…) It is one of the great markets for Muslims”. The French explorer René Caillié confirmed this in the early 19th century: “Every day numerous caravans and merchants arrive carrying all sorts of useful supplies.”
It was the capital of the Bambara kingdom of the same name, which emerged after the dissolution of Songhay. Mungo Park, a Scottish explorer, in the eighteenth century, recognized that “The sight of this sprawling city, the numerous canoes on the river, the lively population, and the crops of the surrounding fields, formed a whole picture of civilization of grandeur, such as I did not expect to find in Africa”.
Bambara city-states such as Zaria, Zanfara, Gobir and Sokoto were urban centres with a thriving life. Katsena and Kano stood out. Leo Africanus said of its inhabitants that they were “Skilled artisans and rich merchants”. Heinrich Barth, a German explorer, was there in the 19th century and underlined the production of its kinds of cotton: “I could estimate the total production of this industry at its minimum export at around 300,000 million Kurds (…) With 50-60,000 Kurds, a family can live comfortably with all expenses included.”

The Cities of East Africa
Kush, an ancient kingdom in Nubia, had three capitals – Kerma, Napata and Meroe – which reflected a culture derived from that of Egypt. In Christian Nubia, Soba, Dongola and Faras were capitals of kingdoms.

Nubian temples. Entrance to Great Enclosure, Musawwarat es-Sufra. CC BY-SA 3.0/COSV

Soba, as documented by Al-Maqrīzī a medieval Egyptian historian, had “Very beautiful buildings, large convents, churches, where gold abounds”, while Dongola was, “Very populated”, the inhabitants “are rich and civilized because they trade with Cairo and with all the cities of Egypt.”On the coast, Mogadishu produced “fabrics that are incomparable; they export most of them to Egypt and elsewhere”; Zayla, “A vast city with a large souk”, while in Kilua “Ivory is almost always given away and gold is very rarely given”, wrote Ibn Battuta.

In the Gulf of Guinea
Begho and Bono Manso (in present-day Ghana) were two important gold trading markets where trade between the interior and the coast was frequent. Kumasi was the capital of all the Akan, while the Yoruba organized themselves into city-states. Ifé was the origin of them all and their spiritual and cultural centre. Oyo was the most powerful, and Benin the best known. Already in the 17th century, Dutch geographer Olfert Dapper in his Description of Africa, said that “It is composed of 30 very straight streets (…) as well as an infinity of small transverse streets.
The houses are close to each other and aligned in good order with roofs and balustrades”.

Cities of the Centre-South
The historical capital of the Mbanza Congo kingdom, renamed São Salvador, was connected to the coast by a wide road. Antonio Pigafetta, navigator, geographer and citizen writer of the Republic of Venice, wrote in his Relación del Reino del Congo: “It was Don Alfonso (…) who surrounded it with walls (…) He did the same with his palace and the royal quarters, leaving in the centre of these enclosures a large open space where the main church was built. Outside the walls there are numerous buildings belonging to the lords, without order, so they can live near the court”.
Further south, Luanda was built in 1575, where shells were used for trade. In his Description of Angola, Abreu de Brito recalled that” one day, while I was in the city, a large quantity of gold coins was sent to the Congo for the purchase of slaves; It was rejected by the sellers. They said that their true currency, their gold, were the shells of Luanda, which were the ones with which they got rich”.

Aerial view of Great Zimbabwe’s Great Enclosure (circumference 250 m, maximum height 11 m)[1] and adjacent ruins looking southeast from the Hill Fort. CC BY-SA 4.0/ Janice Bell

José Luis Cortés López