Interview with Islam Issa | History of Ancient Alexandria

INTRODUCTION

Islam Issa, an award-winning Egyptian-British author, broadcaster, and the new Professor of Public Humanities at Birmingham City University.

Islam's book titled, Alexandria: The City That Changed the World, has received both commercial and critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Runsman Award, and a Book of the Year in several publications, including the Sunday Times in the U.K., the Athens Voice in Greece, and in the U.S., the Ibach Times’ Best History Book of 2024. It's available in hardback, paperback, and as an audio book read by Islam himself.

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Mitchell: Islam, thanks so much for taking the time to jump on with us. I'd like to just get into it and ask if you can tell us a little bit about your background and how you became interested in ancient Alexandria.

Islam: Sure, and thank you for having me. I'm an Egyptian British historian with roots in the city of Alexandria. It's where my parents, grandparents, great grandparents, were raised so it's always been an important part of me, the city, and I grew up hearing stories about it, about its many different periods, about lots of exciting figures who are associated with the city. You know, starting from, of course, Alexander the Great who was the founder and you know the idea of collecting these into a complete history came to me, kind of as a way to give back to Alexandria but also because I kind of missed it. I was living in Scotland during the pandemic and very much missing Alexandria and being able to go there, so it was a way of reconnecting with the city to write its history, a way of reconnecting with my ancestors. And I think beyond that, you know, spatiality is really important to me. There's so much to be said about the way in which culture, including mythology, plays a role in the creation of spaces, the creation of places, and the societies that exist in those spaces. So, I think starting from the founding stories, the mythologies, which we might come on to I guess, you know, they create that space. And then I think the culture, and what I'm interested in is cultural history that continues as a kind of catalyst for the way that we then imagine and keep reimagining that place and the way that we conceptualize it and what we associate with it. So in terms of approach, I think there's definitely a strong sense of cultural history on my part. I wanted to give the myths and the legends, you know, as much attention as the historical dates and figures, because I think it is a place, Alexandria, as we'll find out hopefully in this conversation, that blurs the lines between the factual and the mythological and it's a place that, I think, because it's so old and because it still exists, the past has as much importance as the present and so I wanted to bring aspects of the past with aspects of the present in my work as well.

Mitchell: Yeah, it is funny that you see a reoccurring theme with many of these ancient cities, contemporary cities, a series of stories and myths and you ask yourself “What is the validity of those myths? Does that even matter?” But many of these cities are built on these stories and that's I think what drew me to your work and to dig more into the story of ancient Alexandria. It's shrouded in mystery and interest. So, can you tell us a little bit about the origin story of Alexandria?

Islam: I think you're right that we have a strange relationship with mythology and origin stories or, you know, the legends that come with spaces and, you know, even if we might not think of them as absolute truths. I'll tell you what is an absolute truth, that people in those spaces care about those myths and care about those founding legends so it's a part of their own cultural makeup and then they bring that back into the space. So, I think regardless of whether they're true or false they hold an importance and sort of like find their way back into the space. And the origin story of Alexandria, there are many sort of versions of it, but we know some things. Like we know that Alexander the Great did arrive in Egypt in 332 BC; now that's important because Egypt's already a great civilization at that time, it's already made huge advances in architecture and medicine and science and all sorts of fields. In fact, Alexander, to put things into context, arrives halfway between the pyramids and us. That's how old the pyramids are. So, Alexander, apparently according to legend, sees a vision of Homer. Homer is the greatest poet of western civilization but also at the time, with the absence of scripture and you know proper historical records, he's seen as kind of scripture and history homer So Homer makes a mention of this island called Pharos off the Mediterranean coast and Alexander hurries there, according to the historians of the time, and he arrives at that spot in 331 BC and he sees this island of Pharos which is probably a barren island, it's probably an anticlimax, and behind it there's a coast which just has some fishing villages on it and behind that there is a lake, Lake Mareotis, which still exists today. But what he does notice is that the location is quite unbelievable; it's at the intersection of the continents. It has access to Egypt, but it's still linked to the Hellenistic world, it's close to Asia, Africa, and Europe. It's got the Mediterranean, and the Nile, and the canals that had already been built by the Egyptians. So, the location is unbelievable as far as he's concerned and that's why when it's founded, actually, it's called Alexandria by Egypt not in Egypt; it's seen as a kind of extension as a kind of linking point between the two worlds, these two great civilizations, the Egyptian and the Hellenistic.

So he sees this island, Pharos, and according to the historians of the time he wastes no time, he straight away, he in fact is said to get on the ground onto his knees and start planning a city in the sand, using the sand or the grains or whatever was in front of him, and he draws a city that has many of the things we'd expect from a Hellenistic city, you know, but he also adds things like streets angle to welcome the sea breeze, there's a market square, temples and there's also a shrine to the muses which is basically a library, so you know, the great library, according to legend is something that he envisions immediately. Practically he doesn't waste any time in the sense that he orders or somebody from his team orders this temporary connection between this island and the coast and this is called the Heptastadion, so seven stadia, as would have been the unit at the time, it's about 1,300 meters in length and it connects the mainland with this island and that's how Alexandria can begin to have this really effective harbor. And if we look at pictures of Alexandria today, especially aerial pictures, you'll see that the Heptastadion is still clear. So, where the lighthouse was built on Pharos Island is now the Citadel of Qaitbay, you'll see the citadel and connecting it is this causeway with the coast. So it's quite amazing that that kind of thing, that kind of vision, even if it's been, you know, refurbished and so on, still exists and the legend has it that when he, when Alexander, finishes this design on the ground, a flock of birds comes down and eat and devours all this grain and this is an important story for Alexandrians because at the time it's interpreted to him by the priests that this is going to be a city that's the feeder of nations, they say; So a city that's going to be prosperous, that's going to survive, and true enough of all the Alexandrias and there are you know at least a dozen or so that he, that Alexander, founded. We find that this one still exists and prospers and, you know, those stories are important to people in the city but they also give us an indication of how location and design was so integral to this idea of space and how the natural, which is, like you know, the ocean can go hand in hand with the humanmade, the things that we envision and add to the space.

Mitchell: Yeah it almost seems like there was this confluence of kind of these mythological stories that Alexander had heard, these real hard and true geological, topographical, landscape advantages and geographical advantages and then these ideas that he had about creating this ideal city and I think maybe if we can touch on a little bit of his background relationship with Aristotle, it seems that you know that relationship, that education that he had with Aristotle also helped in him devising this kind of vision for the city.

Islam: Yeah, I mean when we look back at the lineage, if you like, of Alexander and not just Alexander but the person who really created Alexandria after him was Ptolemy, his friend and General. Ptolemy the First and Alexander were both educated by Aristotle, who was educated by Plato, who was educated by Socrates, and that's quite unbelievable, these are the pillars of western education and philosophy. So, Alexander, I think it makes sense for him and for Ptolemy as the founders and creators of the city to care about certain things, to care about, for example, education and knowledge, so that's one of the reasons that we have the library eventually. They also think outside the box in terms of how to create power and one of the ways that they do that is to think about the ways that soft power can be wielded to their advantage.

I think when it comes to the initial urban design, yes, very clearly Aristotle has an influence on it because the original architect is Denocrates. Now Denocrates is somebody whom Alexander entrusted with designing the city at first and he uses a system that's championed by Hippodamus. Hippodamus was the fifth century architect, he's known as the father of urban planning in fact in some sources, so Hippodamus' ideas were held in very high regard by Aristotle. So, Aristotle was a champion of Hippodamus' ideas and so we have one of the ideas that Denocrates comes up with that's based on Hippodamus, based on Aristotle, is the grid system. So, this grid system for the city, so they contend that cities should look like grids, they should have big roads, straight roads that cut one another at right angles, you know, we see that today as well. Aristotle perceived that an ideal city should always think of the angle of the streets in relation to the breeze. So in Alexandria, if you go, you'll see that the, you know, the breeze from the ocean is very welcome and it feels very nice and there's the belief at the time was, there's a good wind and a bad wind and you know if you angle the streets correctly then you're going to not only shelter the citizens from the strong winds but you could also benefit from the breeze that it provides, so that's one example. Another example taken, inspired by Aristotle is, you know, the idea of having the two ports, so when they connected the Pharos island with the mainland they were able to have a port on either side, not just one port, and that increases sort of, it makes traffic flow of ships more efficient because they can exit from one side and enter from another, so there are loads of good examples of where Aristotle came in useful in the very original design of the city in terms of, you know, the urban planning, but also to some extent or to a large extent actually, with the conceptual aspect of the city, like the education and knowledge aspects.

Mitchell: It seems like the city, Alexandria, has all the ingredients, so the makings, the foundations for, you know, one of the world's most impactful cities. Can you give us a bit of a visual maybe about, you already talked about a bit of the urban planning but yeah, what would that look like, maybe a bit more kind of a visual description of some specifics there?

Islam: So, you'd have lanes, for example, that you know, we'd think of car lanes, I think they'd think of chariot lanes. So, you'd have, you know, six, eight lanes for chariots, so very wide roads. The city is split into quarters or districts, so you have for example the royal quarter at the time, you had for example the Jewish quarter, the Egyptian quarter, and so on. So, the idea was that people could live in relative tolerance of one another but that they also don't affect one another negatively by, you know, going out of their districts too much. There was no ghettoization in Alexandria for a long time actually, but there was this idea that you can attract different people to the city by giving them the things that they want and need in their particular districts. You know, there are reports of things like perfumed roads, so the fact that, you know, the roads smelt nice, there are other examples of a square, you know, market squares that are mentioned and then leaving the hills for things like temples, so the highest places, and that's something that happens over the history of Alexandria, is that the best positions are often left for temples, no matter which sort of religion that might be. I think another important aspect as well is the clean water aspect, so to remind ourselves, the Egyptians had already built the canal network, so just a little bit of work, Alexandria was able to connect to the Nile. So fresh water was ample and also there was irrigation, so a sewer system. From very early on these are really important ideas because the, you know, you can build a nice shiny city with lots of, you know, tall buildings but if you forget about, you know, what you're going to do with waste then you haven't really done real urban planning and it's interesting how we see that even today in some places, where it's the last thing that they think about. So here there was a sewer system, there was an engineer especially to design that, there were underground systems as well and these were filled annually around the end of the summer. So the Nile would flood, the Nile flood could be a good thing or a bad thing but it was turned into something beneficial because it would fill the cisterns as well and actually within a few centuries, the city's founding these cisterns was sort of thousands of underground chambers, all built from stone, so it was referred to for a while as the city of a thousand cisterns, which is something that many people don't actually realize.

Mitchell: Wow, wow. That's, yeah it's very interesting to see that they developed the city visually and even down to smells and perfumes of, you know, the experience of walking through the streets those were planned but then also they went through, deeply, it seems like, the infrastructure, water supply, I mean it just seems like a very well thought out city at that early time. Can you tell us a little bit about the original architect of the city?

Islam: Yeah, it's very much linked to the point you've just made actually, because there's a story that the original architect asks Alexander if he wants something very vain, which I'll mention in a moment. So, you know, legend has it that, and it comes from a Roman engineer called Vitruvius who has an architectural encyclopedia from the 1st century BC, it's actually the only treaties and architecture that survives from antiquity, so it's often thought to be the first sort of architectural, theoretical text. But he basically writes about Dinocrates, that's our source for this engineer called Dinocrates, or this architect called Dinocrates, so slightly loose terms at the time. But he sets out to meet Alexander with Dinocrates, with the aim of becoming his designer, his city, his urban planner, and he's, Dinocrates of Rhodes so he has with him all these, like you know, references, letters of recommendation, from Rhodes but he can't get through to Alexander and eventually, you know, legend has it, he decides to dress up as a kind of Hercules figure, so he oils his body, he places a wreath on his head, and you know, he carries a, he puts a lion skin on himself and he carries like a wooden club and apparently that grabs the attention of Alexander who says "Who's this?" And apparently his response is simply "A Macedonian architect who brings you ideas worthy of you” or something along those lines.

But apparently his first suggestion was something on Mount Athos, kind of like Mount Rushmore right, so he wanted to build something for Alexander that sort of really would attract, you know, his ego and there are some theories that, actually, the sculptor of Rushmore took inspiration from this story. And I think what's intriguing here obviously. Alexander's presented as saying no, no, because you know, he's trying to present himself as this, like you know, amazing, humble, leader but either way, what appears to happen is that Alexander doesn't think that this kind of thing is functional, that places need a kind of ample supply of food and water because according to the to the story in Vitruvius, Alexander says, you know, will people be able to have access to food and water if we build this city that looks like him and so it gives us an indication that when designing Alexandria, access to fresh water, access to grain, from the south of Egypt and so on was vital to the vision for the city.

Mitchell: Interesting. First of all, I love that, the story about how the architect was courting the client, I'm thinking maybe I should try that for our next client meeting. But second of all…

Islam: Yeah, let me know how that goes.

Mitchell: Yeah yeah, I'll let you know. But second of all, and I'm just thinking of, yeah these, the kind of wisdom that it seems like Alexander had, you know when a lot of maybe, leaders at the time were consumed with ego, accumulation of power, he seems like had a bit more of a depth of thought. He was thinking about, he had other values, he had values like that you had mentioned earlier, the soft power, power of knowledge, concerned with real, functional aspects. So, it seems like there's a bit of almost an elevated level of consciousness that he had and, of course I'm speculating we don't know that for a fact but, that's my sense of the situation.

Islam: Yeah, a lot of care was put into how Alexander was presented in the decades that followed and for Alexandrians, it was very important that he was presented in a good light as well because it legitimized Ptolemy's rule. We also know that Alexander's tomb was there for centuries, we don't know where it is now, but it was there for centuries because we know that Roman emperors visited it in Alexandria. So, it was important to portray him in a good light but at the same time I think just analyzing him psychologically, this is somebody who really was very, very serious about world domination and you don't really dominate the world unless you have a good sense of how you feed people, appease people. So, when he went to Egypt he was very much seen as a liberator because the Persians hadn't respected Egyptian culture and he went and respected Egyptian culture and also was able to, he created ample supplies for his army, he managed to increase the number of people in his army. So, all of these things seem to suggest that he had a big plan and that this was part of that big plan, albeit that it shows that it's benefited many people because it gave them work, it gave them access to water and food, and a better life.

Mitchell: Yeah, I thought it was interesting too, I think in your book you mentioned that Alexander even respected the spiritual, religious values of the Egyptians at the time by incorporating Egyptian temples into the city of Alexandria alongside Greek temples. Is that fair to say?

Islam: It is, he certainly cared about Egyptian religion and Egyptian ideas and, you know, when he leaves Alexandria, interestingly he doesn't see a single building go up in Alexandria. He's in a rush for his next adventure and he goes to Siwa, which is another Egyptian city of Oasis, and there he goes to the temple and tries to find out if he's divine, finds out that he's divine, obviously. And so, he does care about the Egyptian, the Egyptian culture, because he doesn't want people to see him as an invader but rather as a kind of a friend and liberator. It's something that some Roman emperors noticed and even Napoleon noticed later on where he kind of tried to frame himself as a new Alexander, and that also did a lot for the city in terms of making it unique, because it was a city that combined Greek and Egyptian styles. So, there was such a thing as an Alexandrian style of architecture, an Alexandrian style of art, you know, even the Egyptian temples developed their own style in Alexandria during the Ptolemaic period just after Alexander because they were different to the rest of the country's temples, because they had a Greek design about them. So, you know, they'd have capitals, you know, like the tops of columns, rock cut decorations, wall paintings, all of these kinds of designs appeared in Alexandria from the records that we that we have and they obviously go on to influence other movements let's say, like the Roman Baroque or the, you know, Islamic architecture later, for example.

Mitchell: Yeah, it's fascinating to think about or visualize this kind of hybridization of the Greek culture, the Egyptian culture, and yeah what maybe that architecture looked like.

Do we have remnants of that? Do we have evidence and archaeological information showing us or suggesting small hints of maybe what some of these buildings look like?

Islam: It's very much a kind of cultural history, you know, the amalgamation that we're talking about is very evident, for example, when we see that the divine protector and god of the city was Serapis who was an amalgamation of Greek and Egyptian gods and we know that his temple, the Serapian, was one of the greatest temples in existence at the time. So we get a sense that it's going to be an amalgamated architecture just from the cultural history and from what's been written about it, I mean it's a shame that Ptolemaic architecture, so the Ptolemies are from Ptolemy the First to Cleopatra, the famous Cleopatra the 7th, you know, for those few centuries Ptolemaic architecture is lost, I mean not one piece, not one complete piece, if you like, survives that. The fragments of the buildings are what tell us about this kind of influence about this combination of Greek and Egyptian, about this Alexandrian style, about the fact that they may have used more, you know, capitals and columns than was normal in Egypt and I think to get a better sense of Alexandrian architecture or ancient Alexandrian architecture, one is better off actually going to Rome, maybe going to Jerusalem. So, you know, the doors to the temple in Jerusalem were made in Alexandria using gilded bronze, and Hadrien, the Roman emperor, visited Alexandria, you know. We know he visited Alexander's tomb when it was there and he modeled, you know, his villa, his garden castle and so on in the same style as Alexandria.

Mitchell: That's amazing yeah. Yeah just envisioning these two cultures kind of coming together and producing synthesized culture, synthesized buildings, is really a fascinating thing for me to think about and I see what's happening, kind of in our world, in the architectural lane specifically on how different architectural traditions have kind of come together with others and they're beginning to blend and now with, you know, the internet and pictures it becomes just this large, almost soup of indistinguishable pieces. But I can imagine back then that there was like this really nice synthesizing of these two cultures.

Islam: Yeah, probably with quite little consistency though because I think the amount of change that happened in Egypt, in Alexandria specifically, over those centuries would suggest that the architecture was constantly changing as well, you know, from Egyptian to Greek to Roman and we do have some Roman houses in Alexandria today, you know, and what's fascinating is they have Egyptian style light shafts, for example, in the courtyards and then in the dining rooms they have Greek style mosaic flooring, so you know it's not really standard Roman architecture. But it tells us, it gives us, an indication that there was a constant change and that that hybridity, I don't know if random is the right word but, you know, there's an element of that to it from what I could see as well and you know, I think they give us some cultural hints as well, like you know, that porticos existed or that bath houses existed that were made from like red brick, tells us that there was some prosperity, tells us that people took their leisure time very seriously.

Mitchell: Yeah, that's incredible, yeah. We'll move on and I want to ask you, besides the fact that the ancient city is largely built over, why do you think that Alexandria has not gained the notoriety that ancient cities like Athens or Rome necessarily have?

Islam: Yeah, I mean, I'm hoping that that changes a bit with the interest that this book has created actually. You know, I think there are some sort of obvious reasons, like you know, the fact that so much of ancient Alexandria is under the current city, you know, below it. There's a joke, you know, among the Alexandrians, that if you, you know, you punch the ground you'll find something, and you know. I've spoken to people like you know, police chiefs in Alexandria who tell me that every few days someone calls them because they found something you know, under their kitchen or whatever you know, it might be Alexander's tomb one day, or Cleopatra's tomb, so that's one aspect of it. And then large parts of it are under the water as well so we think, for example, that the lighthouse is now, the majority of that, is under the water. Cleopatra's palace, for example, is under the water. And you know, the estimates of how much has been found under the water of ancient Alexandria ranges from sort of 1 to 3%. We've really not found that much of what's under the water, so I guess one of the reasons is that these kind of physical manifestations of Alexandria's past do not stare us in the face in Alexandria, in the way that they do in say, Athens or Rome. I think there are other issues as well you know, it's ceased to be a capital for a long time you know, when the Arabs arrived they moved the capital because they couldn't really envision ruling from a city on the coast because they didn't have a navy and they were desert people. They also you know, knew more about tents than about high-rises so it was a very strange place to them and also it was a very diverse city it had you know, Egyptians and Greeks and Christians and Jews and Europeans and Levant you know, it was a big mix of people. So, they removed it, removed its capital status, so that I think makes a difference historically as well because there's less funding, there’s you know, less interest in non-capital cities. There's an erasure as well of architecture, of space, when you think about different, the you know, what today we might term Pagan temples becoming churches and then they become mosques and so on. So, you're kind of, with each of those new dynasties or powers, you're kind of erasing aspects of the past as well and I think that's one of the reasons that people go and visit places and that people care about cities is because they want to see the examples from the past. Many of those have been erased in Alexandria but I think a less obvious reason would be that it's endured, like it's still in use. So, something like the Canopic way, which is the main street, it connected all of Alexandria and its name has changed over the years, but that is still in use. It's the oldest planned street in the world and it's in use and it's busy and you know, there's buildings there, there's a nice florist, there you know, the El-Nozha Gardens is potentially the oldest surviving garden in the world, thousands of years old and if you go past it there'll be you know, kids running around and people eating mango ice cream, so it really is in use. These places are not really artifacts in the way we might expect them to be and that might be another reason, I think, why it hasn't got that status of Athens and Rome.

Mitchell: Sure, that makes me think of cities in a whole different way you know, you think of Athens and Rome you say, “Man these cities have really endured, they're still there, I can see them.” But really, they’re, you know, they're ruins, not in use. Where, yeah, in Alexandria people are still utilizing them which may be a testament to go back all the way to the original urban planning layout values, ideas, that have been interjected into the original city.

Islam: Yeah, I think with Alexandria you have to use many senses when you're there to pick up on the age and the complexity of the city. It's not staring you in the face, like I said, if anything it’s kind of, there's a kind of conspicuous absence of the past in so many parts of the city.

Mitchell: So, Islam, can you tell us why maybe the architecture of the city exists, does not exist in Alexandria but starts to exist in other areas in the world?

Islam: Yeah, I think one of the founding principles of Alexandria was to bring people from different parts of the world to live together in kind of a relative peace so that it can become an economic hub and the result of that, as alongside the harbor being one of the busiest harbors in the world, meant that you got influence from all different parts of the world further than most people would imagine. And then those people leave and take ideas with them as well and then I think once we reach sort of the Arabs’ arrival, they then have a kind of empirical idea that they can take their ideas to their own capitals as well and their cities, so you know. The Umayyads as a ruling power were a good example of that because they had a lot of money and you know, when the Arabs arrived in Alexandria, one of the things they said was there was a golden dome that they marveled at; it's a dome and it's likely to be one of the temples that was the sort of what we'd call a pagan temple today and we know that because we know that it had a gilded bronze dome. So, then the Umayyads in the late 7th century built the dome of the rock, right, and they build a golden dome, so they also take this octagonal design from the Alexandrian Cathedral that was there. It was the church of John the Baptist and then they also fill the Dome of the Rock’s interior with the mosaics by Alexandrian artists.

So what many people don't realize is that the mosques only start having domes right at the end of the seventh century with the Dome of the Rock and that the Alexandrian artisans also then go and build say the mosque of Damascus with you know which was at the time seen as kind of wonder of the world so Alexandria has a huge influence because people come to it and then they take the ideas elsewhere or in in the case of the Umayyads, for example, they literally take the designers the architects the artisans to the places where they want to build

Mitchell: Really interesting so  its geographic location and its economic position as a hub of transport shipping has this obviously ripple effect, outward effect, on the architecture on the way the city looks that's really interesting that the architecture travels with these economic engines.

Islam: absolutely and I think that has a lot to do with the vision of the city from the from the from the get-go.

Mitchell: Yeah. So, Islam, Alexandria seems to have been founded on a new set of values and ideals being a depository of knowledge and academic study could be a source of power prestige economic stimulation and cultural identity how is this different from other cities maybe in the ancient world?

Islam: Yeah, it builds on from the kinds of points we've been mentioning it's a great question because Alexandria is purposely not organically built purposely not organically expanded so many cities around the world are a result of war for example or invasion or division. Alexandria that's not the case it's kind of nothing at the beginning and there's a vision about how it can come to shape and fruition and one of those ideas was that if you bring people from different parts of the world and they live in relative peace then you can make money you can turn it into a world trade center, world trade hub. And true enough Alexander invites people from the south of Egypt, and then you have people coming from the west from the sort of Morocco region, you have people coming from Sicily and Rome and the Greek world, you have many Jews arriving at the beginning as well they’re given tax exemption and freedom of worship and they form a very important group in Alexandria for centuries and then you also have even evidence of you know Indians arriving towards the beginning so that's how far people came from in order to get work and I call it in in the book the Alexandrian dream actually. I think it's an early example of that of that idea.

And I think that the second radical idea is that knowledge equals power so it's this idea that if you can collect the world's knowledge, and look after the world's knowledge, and disseminate knowledge as well because the library had a museum which is basically where there was a research center. If you can do that then you have huge soft power because the most important scholars in the world come to you and the research they do affects you so they start to research, you know, the winds and how they affect the harbor or they'll start to research, you know, how you plan your own city and there are huge advances in the city as a result you know. We have the world's first steam engines, we have first vending machines, you know, punctuation, you know there's loads of stuff that that is born in Alexandria as a result. So, these two ideas combined, I think these are two radical ideas at the time, one is bring people together, two, knowledge equals power. And to do all of that, I think there is a kind of soft power thing going on that we've mentioned.

So, the soft power that knowledge brings the soft power that trade brings and how you might represent that is actually through architecture as well because they build the lighthouse which is an ancient wonder of the world you know. According to the historian, Pliny, the lighthouse cost more than a tenth of Ptolemy the First's treasury, right. In today's money that's something like, 800 talent is something like 16 million pounds or say $20 million so the lighthouse is this, yes it's practical because you know it's got the fire and the mirror at the top so by day the mirror reflects the sunlight by night the fire at the top helps the ships navigate but it's more about soft power than it is about its function because it's telling people "Look at the kind of thing we can build look how much money we have look where you've just arrived you've arrived in the city of the future."

Mitchell: Interesting. So it has this, it has a functional value as a lighthouse to bring ships into the harbor but it has a maybe more profound value as a symbolic piece or an icon for the city insinuating, yeah soft power or a beacon of knowledge maybe, I think you, I think is how you may have referred to it in the book.

One of the things that you had mentioned earlier that really resonated with me was this kind of acceptance or this welcoming in of you know different cultures into the city and the generation of economic power through the assimilation of different cultures that just kind of struck my mind and gave remnants of New York City and I know in your book you had made the illusion from the lighthouse being similar to Statue of Liberty but in there's I think there's also this idea about the city itself New York, being founded by the Dutch. The Dutch were really interested in gaining economic power accumulating, you know, financial resources building businesses and they were very accepting of different cultures and kind of optimize those and that's how this city was built. There’s this, seems to be a lot of similarities between New York and Alexandria in that way.

Islam: Yeah, and when you think about it New York's a very young city compared to Alexandria, and you know who knows where we'll being hundreds and thousands of years’ time you know. We're speaking about a city that's thousands of years old and where the vision kind of gets interpreted in different ways as time goes by and people have different priorities as time goes by and levels of tolerance increase and decrease and you know and all of this for better or for worse sometimes it, sometimes the city goes through good periods and sometimes it goes through worse periods and there's a lesson in that you know that we have to accept that nothing lasts forever and that that these kind of peaks and troughs are kind are inevitable with any place.

Mitchell: Yeah, the city is a living organism, and it yeah goes through different phases, and I think feeding it with or contributing to the kind of positive growth of the city I think is critical and that's what I think the library in my did or does for Alexandria. If I'm being idealistic about it, you know, it's contributing this idea that education, accumulation of knowledge, study pursuit of you know different, yeah intellectual pursuits, is stimulating and positive for people and I think maybe the city fed off that in a way.

Islam: Yeah, it definitely developed a reputation as a city to be taken seriously on the world stage. Any form of soft power is useful you know in in the context of dealing with other states I think with Alexandria you know that there was, there was the idealistic side, which is, you bring in these scholars and actually you give them a salary, you give them free you know, lodging and food and they come up with all these great ideas that help serve the city and serve its leaders. On the other hand, we do have you know records of more cynical people saying that this isn't the shrine of muses as it was called. This is the cage of muses, this is where they trap them so they can, you know, do propaganda for the state and so on. So, you know there are different periods in Alexandria that give us that indication. There's a period at the beginning where the chief librarian is a kind of minister, they live in the royal quarters and they raise the princes and princesses, or they teach them, tutor to them and they report directly to the pharaoh or the king. That sounds very you know like a very important job. And then within a century or two you know it's an army chief who's the chief librarian because the priorities of the pharaoh or the king have shifted and they need to keep the peace because there's infighting between the Ptolemies, between the ruling family, you know, a kind of succession sort of situation. So yeah, it changes over time and in many ways, I think the library in Alexandria gives us an indication of what government priorities are like. When the library is booming, the government's priority appears to be something around knowledge, creation, and that soft power. But we'd be fools to think that every government has the same priorities, you know, and the library represents different things to different rulers at different times.

Mitchell: Yeah, it's almost when a ruling party comes in and they have a scarcity mindset it's about kind of power accumulation and control; things tighten up a bit. Then, when somebody comes in and they have maybe a looser perspective on things, knowledge and maybe a more kind of organic pursuit of growth is allowed to flourish is how I would maybe conceptualize it.

Islam: Yeah, that that does make sense and I think I think the more you read about Alexandria and understand Alexandria's history the less surprising you know today's politics is. That people have different agendas, that we have a pendulum that we swing from right to left to right to left that you know leader can come in and impose certain views that might be polarizing you know I think all of these things that happen over and over again over history you know as do pandemics as do all sorts of things.

Mitchell: Yeah. One thing I wanted to touch on libraries, the concept of libraries. I mean we, I think, we have evidence of them dating back to Mesopotamia where the people were gathering scrolls and storing them, but I think and correct me if I'm wrong. Alexandria maybe was the first to be really open, outwardly open, about desiring or wanting knowledge from any culture into that library. Is that fair to say?

Islam: Yeah, I mean the idea of sort of hoarding books so to speak is something actually quite Aristotelian. So, Aristotle hoarded books he had a really big library, but it was you know predominantly for him and his students. What happens with Alexandria is you know when Demetrius comes in, who's the former governor in Athens, who's given the task of creating the library. He’s told that they want every book in the world, that's the job description, get every book in the world. And so you know there's something that's not selective about that, there's something that's a bit obsessive about that but there's something that's also universalizing about it and so yes true enough the library begins to gather books no matter which country or which region they are from and at first, doesn't really prioritize you know one book over another. That leads to problems because you then have forgeries because if you want every book in the world, then anyone can write anything, and it will have value. So, it does have its own problems, this idea of complete and universal knowledge is a very idealistic idea.

But yes, you know you have translators there so for example the Hebrew Bible is translated into Greek, into Alexandrian Greek, which is a huge, monumental moment for the Jewish population of Alexandria who by that time spoke better Greek than Hebrew, so that's one example. You also had Egyptian priests who were told to write and add Egyptian beliefs to the library so it didn't really have one set of beliefs or one sect. Yes, it had more Greek than other texts, but it did very much have a kind of universal aspect to it.

The other thing Alexandria did, which is kind of revolutionary, is you know the fact that it cataloged them. So, they were cataloged, so it wasn't just book hoarding without knowing what you've got, you know they had a record of every book they had, and they also put them in order by alphabet. Alphabetization, you know, is an Alexandria Library concept as well.

Mitchell: Interesting. And can you touch on a little bit about how when the books came into the harbor, they would take the book and bring it back into the library inspect it, I think that was a funny story in your book.

Islam: Yeah, like I mentioned you know it does become a bit obsessive and there are laws and policies put into place to try to make sure they have every single book. So among those for example as you say is when a ship you know comes into the harbor, it's inspected and this inspection isn't for contraband, it's for books and if a book is found it's taken straight to the library where it's copied and usually they would keep the original and return the copy to the owner of the book and they would label it as a book that's from the ship. That’s one example of a policy that took place. Another is that you couldn't take books out of the city you know so that was another thing that was searched on people's way out.

There's a period where the arrival library in Pergamum is causing some distress to Alexandria even though they didn't have anywhere near as many books. So, there's an embargo on the export of papyrus from Egypt as a result so that other libraries couldn't you know create books and compete.

Mitchell: Interesting. Well, you know one of the main concepts that we've been talking about is this idea of the stories and the values, the myths that ancient Alexandria was built on. This is a bit of a divergence but I'm always curious to know what values ideas stories do you think that the cities of today may be built on, and they all vary depending upon location, but do you see possibly a common or repeating theme today?

Islam: I do see many repeating themes. I’m not sure that they're necessarily sort of values driven you know. I think there are some that are negative and some that are positive you know. I think one of them is the imposition of identity you know people really trying to put their own identity on a space you know the lighthouse that we've mentioned is a good example of that you know it had a statue of Zeus on the top, he was the divine protector of the city, he was related to Alexander you know. And then in the 9th century even the Tulun decides to add a dome at the peak of the lighthouse so that's you know that's an example of a way he's turned you know something you know into his own identity.

You know but then we can turn that, I don't think it's that straightforward because actually that example, we can turn that kind of architectural appropriation on its head because you know when he builds the mosque, Ibn Tulun, which is near his new capital in Cairo, he gets an architect, like a Christian architect to do a three-stage design of the lighthouse for the minuet. So, if you look at the mosque of today it's one of Africa's oldest surviving mosques, it looks it's a lighthouse inspired mosque. That the closest we're going to get to the original lighthouse.

So, I think there's something here about the change of identity the imposition of identity. I was you know I was going to say erasure of identity but maybe it's like shifting identity. The way that we deal with space let's say. And what we think that does in terms of how people perceive us whether we think we are representing ourselves through that space. And Alexandria has fascinating examples of that. You know there's a mosque, the mosque that was a temple, that became a church, that became a mosque but on the prophet Daniel Street you have you know a synagogue church and a mosque all next to each other. So, they suggest different kind of levels of tolerance throughout history.

Mitchell: Interesting yeah. I think it's a natural human instinct to want to be remembered or preserve your legacy, and architecture is a method through which many people, I think, take to do that. I think yeah I think that that path is fraught with potential landmines and when you're trying to impose your identity your legacy into the city or into the minds of people into the city through a building it, I think there's a it can be very it can, not be a good result whereas if you look more and you take an alternative approach and you say hey I'm not so much thinking from ego I'm thinking from about the people and you're really considering the kind of users of the city how can I create an architecture that not necessarily represents me as the architect or me as the patron or me as the developer but how can this represent the people of the city. I think that may be a more healthy approach not that it's the right approach but those types of spaces seem to have a longer lasting, more profound impact on cities.

Islam: Yeah, and it's a difficult question when it comes to you know ancient cities or cities with a long history or even you know cities where there's been a fast change in population number for example. Or you know in the United States you've had so many different movements in such a short period of time. So, you know I think there are there's a kind of question I see across different cities which is about change and how we deal with change but also about preservation and how we deal with preservation you know. Should we be looking after all historic spaces I think that's one thing that's a really difficult thing to answer, how do we develop while keeping that space as it is or while appreciating it? Alexandria for example is rather overpopulated today, you know, and because it's such a small space you know, it's 13 miles you know from one end of the coast to the other. All of this history and that coastal road and going inwards you know southwards what do you do with overpopulation you know. And what benefit is the stuff from the past to the people of the present, do we have to create a narrative that makes those things relevant, or do we actually just have to look at these sort of highly practical you know survival instincts that people have as well. And it's a big question when it comes to Egypt with heritage for example because you know there are tourists for example who want to see you know rather inconsequential dynasties let's say like you know Ten Carmun who's very famous because of the state in which his tomb was found but in reality, he's not the most important pharaoh. But then you know we might be removing artifacts from a different period or buildings from a different period to create wider streets for those tourists to go and see that more inconsequential time period of Egyptian history. So, I think there are lots of questions to be asked about what we do with these things from the past, buildings from the past spaces from the past.

Mitchell: Yeah, it's almost it's we're looking at these cities from our lens our contemporary lens our lens today and it's a seems like an almost overwhelming job to be the curators of what things get preserved what things get brought into the cultural narrative and what things don’t that’s just seems very complex.

Islam: Sure and then you know the more that time goes on the more there is of the past so you know the questions that you have to ask as an architect in California today are going to be very different to the questions that were asked 100 years ago because there was less there right? Less from the past that you had to take account of less population. I think it's a question about you know the shifts that we're making as well you know. I think the example I gave from the lighthouse is a shift that's to do with politics and religion and I've given a few of those examples and now what are the priorities that we need to be thinking about, you know. Is it about how we fit the city around a kind of capitalist model or is it how we fit the city around a kind of modernization model? And we see that in Alexandria today you know with the increase in walls and bridges, bridges that are very much needed for the traffic, housing because of the overpopulation and so on.

Mitchell: Yeah, yeah. I think from an architectural point of view bringing historians like yourself into projects potentially that are within let's say cities with a lot of cultural heritage and a lot of history is incredibly important because they give the designer and the patron of the building context and a landscape to navigate within. And without that you're kind of operating in outer space and you may be sending a message you don't want to send. So, I think whenever we're as architects are operating within cities introducing people who have a real deep rich understanding of that cultural context is so critical and I'm very thankful for your depth of knowledge on ancient Alexandria. It's always a city that fascinated me for the obvious reasons of beginning with the lighthouse and the library and the disappearance of those. Digging into more of it with you and inside of your book has just unveiled this much deeper layer of a super interesting pivotal city in our world history. So, thanks so much.

Islam: You're very welcome. And I think it's really important these fields do you know talk to each other and converge because I think you know what we see in history is the impact of people's actions and the legacy they leave behind and what you're doing is creating a legacy, a physical legacy that you leave behind as well.

Mitchell: Sure, sure, well thanks so much.

Thanks so much for listening to the interview. It was such a pleasure to work with Islam and to speak with him. As a student of cities throughout history, I was captivated by his capability to bring back the ancient city of Alexandria to life in the moment of reading it. There were moments in the book where I could begin to actually visualize and feel like I was walking through its streets. It was fantastic. The history of the city needs to be understood by more people. In my opinion, it had such a pivotal role in shaping our world and people need to know about it.

Islam's book titled Alexandria: The City That Changed the World, has received both commercial and critical acclaim, winning the prestigious Runsman Award, and a book of the year in several publications, including the Sunday Times in the UK, the Athens Voice in Greece, and in the U.S., the Ibach Times Best History Book of 2024. It's available in hardback, paperback, and as an audio book read by Islam himself. Purchase links are in the description, and to find out more about the author and the book, you can visit islamissa.com/alexandria.

Thanks so much.

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